Hearts Racing
by erdbeerpfannkuchen
Summary: Hiei is a track star that's not really into the whole college thing, but with a certain Shuichi Minamino as his TA, he might be more interested in Biology (and Comparative Anatomy) than he thought. Will Hiei get a social life? Will Yusuke ever go to class? Find out on this episode of "every other fanfic ever!" T for now, probably M later.
1. Chapter 1

"HARDER!"

Hiei's legs pumped underneath him, arms propelling him forward, forward, forward.

Twenty meters. Ten meters. Something caught on his chest and twisted up around his knee, his foot. He gasped and grabbed the soft material of his shorts. The cheering came in a loud wave that pounded against his throbbing head. He swam in it and dove down, hacking for air.

"Good race, kid."

He coughed. "What time."

"Eleven exactly." Enki patted him on the back, all smiles. "You won."

Hiei pulled the finish line ribbon from his left leg and tossed it on the ground. "I know I won." He stood up from the synthetic track and snatched the water bottle from his coach, gulping it down. "But with my slowest time this week."

The other kids were stretching and talking with their own coaches, staring at the scoreboard. It was only state finals, not even regionals, so his time didn't have to be perfect. His closest contender had been half a second behind.

"Stop chasing ten seconds," his coach said, ruffling his protégé's black hair in the way he hated. "If you keep practicing, you'll get back to it."

Hiei snorted and stood. There was another two hours before the 200m. Luckily, this conference arranged the schedule so that no contender had to compete in back-to-back events. He headed to the inside of the stadium and pulled his headphones from his backpack.

Enki called back to him. "Aren't you going to watch the rest of the team?"

He put his earbuds in and turned the volume up.

* * *

"Both wins, huh?" Said coach Enki, his sweat stains seeping through his shirt like a Rorschach blot. He turned on the air conditioning in the van. "Not bad."

Hiei slumped down in his seat at the front. Other kids in the back pushed and shoved each other in the bench-style chairs. One girl yelled that another was tugging her pony tail. Enki urged quiet, and was ignored. Some of the occupants had just turned fifteen, but most were older. The younger group's conference would be held the next day. After catching each other up on their ranks, times, and what they wanted for dinner, the kids died down, quaking legs finally catching up to them. Within the first half-hour, three of the ten had fallen asleep, sweaty hair and arms and faces leaving marks on the van windows. Hiei reached forward and turned the A/C down. He was getting goosebumps.

The ride back was always better than the ride over. The tension that always built during the morning drive dissipated after a concrete win or (rarely) loss, and Hiei could just stare at the road and think of nothing or anything instead of strategy and training and his desire for victory. Now, he thought of nothing, and rubbed his exposed arms.

Enki yawned and scanned the radio, keeping the volume low. His large finger hesitated every time at the news channels, waiting for a flicker of insight or information to pass the airwaves, but ultimately always settled on one old blues station or another. By now, he and Hiei were the only two both conscious and without earbuds (Hiei's had broken after a rival team member's parent had "accidentally" stepped on his bag), so they were the only ones affected by his music selection. Since Hiei had long ago announced his permanent apathy on all radio-related matters, Enki always had free reign.

"Hey," said Enki. The sky was darker by now, half by clouds and half by the approach of dusk. "We need to talk."

Hiei kept his gaze on the passing yellow lines and waited.

"You're going to college. I've gone through all your recruitment mail. You know you've been solicited from these places since fourteen, right?" Enki said.

"Not interested."

"Well, I sent your SAT scores to a few places anyway, along with the clips we have of some of your best times. Even put in that one time you did hurdles." Hiei winced. Not his best event. "Anyways, you're basically accepted at a handful of places already. Really good track and field schools. The best."

Enki had forced Hiei to take the SAT last year, just after he had turned seventeen, for some accreditation related reason that allowed the permanent training camp Enki operated to continue to be registered as a school. They did, technically, learn, but it was a formality tacked on to the end of the day after training. Hiei had never put in much effort into studying, or anything he didn't like, so he had answered the test questions but did not dwell on whatever his scores meant or how they compared. The test had been a minor inconvenience and he had not thought about it since he put his pencil down.

"You do know some of these places have coaches that live, eat, and breathe track more than I do." _Hard to beat Enki at eating_ , Hiei thought, eyeing the large, fleshy bulge that filled the gap between the coach's ribcage and the steering wheel. "You've been living in these training camps your whole damn life, and they can't get you an individual trainer for your own events. You don't need someone who knows how to do javelin toss or shotput. You need someone who can help you run."

Hiei grit his teeth. "It's not that hard. You go fast."

"Weren't you complaining about not getting to your best time again today? You know it's more than that, and I don't have time to baby you anymore." Enki reached back into the pouch behind his seat and tossed some fliers at Hiei. "Pick your favorite."

Hiei grunted and picked them up. They all looked the same, with boldfaced white serif letters placed over an image of a leafy campus or smiling young adults. He highly doubted Enki had sent his scores to all of these places. "I'll pass."

Enki poked at Hiei's chest. "Read them. Google their facilities. If you can't find one with a better program, then you can stay at camp for another year."

"Eyes on the road."

Enki swerved around a Fiat. "Hard to believe they make cars that small."

They settled back into silence, but Enki knew that changing topics meant Hiei would do it. Hiei knew that Enki knew he would do it, too, so he shoved the pamphlets into his backpack and feigned indifference for the duration of the ride.

Location. Size. Student-Faculty Ratio. Club offerings. Meal plans. Greek life. Dorm life.

* * *

"Come on," Enki said, slapping down a college-search book (Princeton Review?) on the table, "you have to care about something."

Hiei looked up from his phone. "Like what?"

"Like anything I just listed."

Hiei went back to scrolling.

Enki sighed. "So you'll go, but won't pick where."

"There's free ice baths and saunas for athletes here," Hiei said, sliding his phone across the table to show him the website. "Twenty-four hours."

"So you wanna just go there? The place with the saunas?" Enki dragged his hand over his face. The red of his lower eyelids peeked out for a second from the force, briefly making him look as exasperated as he felt, before they sprung back into place. "You're not going to worry about classes or anything?"

Hiei grabbed his phone back and opened another window in his browser. "You're the one making me do this."

"That school is halfway across the country, you know."

"What, are you planning on visiting?"

Enki opened his book again and flipped around. "Okay, if that's really where you want to go, I'll call them and see if they'll cover all your costs."

Despite what Enki had said earlier, he had only applied to the schools that offered Early Action and didn't require essays. After some goading, Hiei had been willing to explore options at schools that took regular decisions in January. But no essays or SAT subject tests. Or the ACT. Or effort.

"If I have to pay for anything, I won't do it."

"Yeah, I got that."

"Including books."

"Now you're interested in your education?"

Hiei slid off his chair. "I'm interested in my wallet. I don't suppose you're paying for me."

"Right you are. I think six years-worth of free housing has been good enough."

"Yeah, yeah." Hiei pulled open the door of Enki's office. "See you tomorrow."

Hiei laid in bed longer than he intended to, thinking. He never really considered his training environment or regimen to be that influential on his times. If he could sleep, eat, and run, most of the rest was up to his own abilities. In the past three years, he hadn't gone below ten or above eleven seconds, and that was hardly due to his coach's individualized attention or advice. He had a sneaking suspicion that Enki was not interested in his actual success in track but on his more generalized future. "Sappy bastard," he grunted, before turning out the lights.

Hiei didn't like people, enclosed spaces, or loud noise.

* * *

Move in day had all of those things at once.

It was like the first moments in a van before competition, only way worse. The lobby of the dorm was a crowd of parents and kids, all carrying overstuffed boxes of towels and lamps and school supplies and yelling about things that they had forgotten or couldn't find. Enki had dropped him off at the airport a few hours ago with a farewell that seemed almost too eager and left him to move in alone. Not that having him here would have made it any better. His stomach would have had enough mass to displace a significant portion of the crowd and force Hiei even closer to the other bystanders that encircled him. Really, it was a blessing he couldn't come.

The elevators had been reserved for people with large items, so everyone else was condemned to walk up the stairs. The stairwell was about the same as the lobby, but it had only two inches of personal space instead of five. Hiei held his duffel bag close to his stomach and tried not to grind his teeth flat. After eight agonizingly slow flights, he pushed aside some freckle faced girl two feet taller than him to throw open the door to the fourth floor.

The hallway was nearly empty by comparison. A few students frantically flitted around, but the rooms showed little signs of occupation beyond a stray box or mattress pad strewn on the floor. The floor was, however, extremely loud. There was a noise that sounded like two baboons fighting, complete with the clanking and clunking of the battle. And, unfortunately, it was getting louder with every step he took towards his own room.

He stopped outside of 418. The noise was coming from inside.

"Kuwabara, move your stupid butt!"

"Shut up Urameshi, I have to do this backwards!"

"Yeah, well I can't see."

"Yeah, well whose idea was it to get this stupid couch in the first place?"

There was the sound of stumbling and a massive thud. Hiei pushed open the door.

One boy was ferociously cackling as the other was trapped underneath a stained couch in a jarring pattern of jaundice yellow and vomit green plaid. Somehow, the couch was trapped between one of the bedframes and a desk, with the unfortunate ginger stuck between the three pieces of furniture.

"Get this thing off of me!"

"I will after I get a few dozen pictures." He was already at it, the phone making obnoxious sounds to prove it.

"URAMESHI!"

"Both of you," Hiei said, just loud enough for them to hear, "get out."

Abruptly, the laughing one whirled around. "Hey, shrimp, move along. I think you missed your turn for the day care center."

The stupid lug with the red hair somehow managed to force the couch off of himself and scrambled to get in on the action. "Who the hell are you?"

"This is my room," Hiei said, "and I think you both have done enough damage to it."

"No way, kid, I'm going to have to see some evidence," said the black haired boy, placing his hands on his hips.

Hiei held up the key to the room, clearly labelled with the number 418 in bold sharpie. "Will this suffice?"

He scoffed and slapped the key away without a glance. "That's gotta be a housing mistake. Kuwabara's form says this is his room, and it's a single."

"Um…"

Urameshi glared and turned around to face the lump apparently named Kuwabara. "What?"

"I guess I forgot to tell you…" Kuwabara's face turned as red as his hair. "A few weeks ago, the housing office sent me an email. They said they didn't have enough space to give me a single."

"What?! Are you serious? Can they even do that to you?"

"Yeah, did you not notice the two beds in here?"

Dread sunk into Hiei's bones. No. No. Absolutely not.

"I'm not rooming with anyone," Hiei said, picking his key up off the floor with one hand and fishing for his housing form in his pocket with the other. The form he had been given in mid-August definitely said he would have his own room, and there was no room for compromise.

Kuwabara pulled out his phone and clicked on it a few times. "Uh, is your name Hiei?"

Denial. "I'm not living with anyone."

"Check your email, dude." Kuwabara pointed to the text on the screen. "It says you're my roommate."

"You're living with this thing?" Urameshi asked, pointing to Hiei. "Yikes."

Anger. Hiei wanted to scream. College was supposed to be as minimally intrusive as possible on his life. In less than two minutes, these two were already intruding on his sanity.

Kuwabara lunged at Urameshi, but Urameshi quickly dodged, letting his friend fall flat on his face. "Too slow!"

The idiots were back to fighting. Hiei pulled up his email on his phone and confirmed the worst. He indeed was downgraded to a double, assigned to one Kazuma Kuwabara. Fantastic.

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck you!"

"Shut up, both of you" Hiei said, his inflection unchanged, "we're going to the housing office."

Both of them stopped abruptly, and Urameshi released his grip on Kuwabara's hair. "Kuwabara, why didn't you think of that?"

"Because the office just opened today, stupid." He pushed his friend off. "Plus I didn't realize my roommate was going to be a goth dwarf."

"If you don't hurry up, I'll show you how dark I can be." Hiei dropped his duffel bag on the floor, kicking it under the one bed that was accessible around the dirty couch.

Urameshi looked between Hiei and an appalled Kuwabara. "Whatever, man." He crawled over the redhead and pushed past Hiei with his shoulder on his way out the door.

"Wait!" Kuwabara said, scrambling out the door after his friend. "Don't leave me with him!"

As soon as they cleared the doorway, Hiei slammed and locked the door behind him. Stepping over the couch onto the bed he claimed for himself, he started a new email to the director of housing and CC'd the athletic, financial aid and scholarship directors, and, after a thought, added Enki's horrible gmail (sportzguy57). He scrolled back to look at the emails Enki had sent on his behalf to figure out how to format the damn intro. _To whom it may concern, please give me the damn room you said I'd have a month ago. Thanks._ He saved it as a draft and decided his time would be best spent unpacking for now.

The other two had left him in peace for less than two minutes before they started banging on the door. "You dick! I thought you were coming with us to the office!"

"I'm sure it will be helpful for you to get their advice," Hiei grunted, retrieving his duffel bag and beginning to pull out the contents. "Seeing as you're homeless."

There was more yelling, so he put his new headphones in and went about this business. Unfortunately, this peace didn't last much longer, either.

As the door slammed open, Hiei pulled out one earbud. "All settled?"

"I got a spare from the front desk, asshole," Kuwabara growled, pointing the key at Hiei in the least menacing way possible.

"Well, that solves neither of our problems."

Kuwabara was seething. "Then come with us!"

Hiei sighed. This guy was probably going to bother him until he agreed, and since he couldn't lock him out anymore, he was mostly out of options.

Bargaining.

* * *

Every parent was crammed into the housing office, along with their respective offspring. Hiei, Urameshi and Kuwabara were jammed in the back. Half of the problems Hiei overheard could have been solved with a map and an ounce of self-sufficiency.

"I can't believe you didn't call them as soon as you got that email," Urameshi grumbled, slumping as far in his chair as he could while remaining physically on it. He elbowed his friend. "This is all your fault."

"Me? How is this my fault?" Kuwabara snapped.

"Because now I have nowhere to live!"

"Well that's your own fault for getting kicked out of the dorms."

Yusuke pulled out his phone and started texting. "Maybe I can live at Kurama's house 'til I've found a place."

"That's a terrible idea," Kuwabara grumbled. "And he's gonna say no."

Yusuke frowned. "He just did."

"Told you."

Hiei was going to have an aneurysm.

"Next?" called the woman at the desk.

Fuck the line, he was going to be next.

Hiei pushed through dozens of legs to reach the counter, which was about even with his collarbone. "There's a problem with my room," he said, placing his hands on the counter and standing on his tiptoes to match the receptionist's gaze. "I've been assigned a room with another occupant, but my paperwork says I was given a single."

The woman frowned. "I'm sorry, but we had an unexpectedly high number of students enroll this year. Some rearrangements had to be made. If you want to change rooms, that form will be available soon on your school login page."

Hiei grit his teeth. "How soon?"

"Soon enough," she said, malevolence sparking into her eyes. Or maybe that was the computer glare on her glasses. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Next?"

Kuwabara, who had just managed to push through the crowd, slapped the desk. "Are you kidding me?! I can't live with this guy!" he said, gesturing to Hiei. Hiei nodded in agreement.

"The form will be available on your university login page soon, sir. Again, next?"

Urameshi grabbed Kuwabara and started dragging him out of the office, and Hiei followed. As soon as they got outside, Yusuke collapsed on a bench. "So what now?"

"Like hell I'm going to wait for that form," Kuwabara said, smacking a fist into his palm. "There's gotta be another way."

"We could break into the key box," Hiei said. "And you two could live in some other room for the next week until the rest of the building moves in."

Urameshi sat up. "That's actually not a bad idea."

"Are you kidding? That's stealing!" Kuwabara said, horrified. "We'd be squatting! I have standards!"

"I don't." Urameshi hopped off the bench with a devious expression. "So what's the best time to execute?"

"Probably tonight." Hiei said. "The desk hours for the dorm said they won't be fully staffed during graveyard until this Monday. There's security cameras outside the building, but not inside."

Kuwabara balked. "What the hell, dude? Were you looking for them?"

"Good call. So what, one in the morning sound good?" Urameshi asked.

"Holy shit," Kuwabara said, looking to Urameshi. "You guys are not seriously working together on this. He's a little punk!"

Urameshi shrugged. "Yeah, but so am I."

* * *

They met on the second floor staircase at one.

Hiei peeked out from the stairwell door. "Coast is clear."

Urameshi pushed the door open, crouching and far more alert than necessary. They made their way behind the desk, careful to scan for any lingering students in the lobby. Hiei pulled out his knife.

"Whoa there," Urameshi said. "Did you lure me here to shank me?"

"And how were you going to pick the lock?"

"With a bobby pin, like any normal petty criminal." Brandishing the accessory from his pocket, Urameshi went right to work on the key lock. Hiei snorted and leaned on the desk, knife still in hand, keeping watch.

"You know, I might apply for a job behind the desk. It looks like easy money," Yusuke said, fiddling with the pin. Hiei didn't comment.

"What, not into small talk?"

"No. Especially not while we're committing a crime."

Urameshi shrugged. "I mean, we're not killing anyone." He glanced at the knife. "At least not yet. This was your idea, by the way."

"If I realized how much talking would be involved, maybe I should have just kept the plan to myself."

"And give up your room? Nah, you needed me."

This was true. Without his involvement, it would be Hiei that would be sleeping in a room that was not his own. It wouldn't have bothered him if not for the fact that Kuwabara would still be in the room that was rightfully his, which was unacceptable.

The lock sprung free and Urameshi let out a little "yahoo!" before Hiei shushed him. They decided to take the two keys of the room immediately below 418, for convenience's sake. Urameshi put the lock back in place with a click, and aside from a few new scratches around the key hole, it looked just as it had before their arrival.

"I'm still gonna have to find somewhere else to live," Yusuke said as they climbed the stairs. "Half of those boxes are mine." Receiving no reply, he continued. "I guess I could pester the guys to let me live at the frat house."

Hiei scoffed. "You're in a frat?"

"Well, yeah. Gamma Alpha Psi for life," he said, making some sort of hand gesture Hiei interpreted to be a hand sign associated with the fraternity. "Kuwabara's in it too."

"Do they only take idiots?"

"You're the idiot," Urameshi said. "How do you not know about Gamma Psi?"

"I have no interest in that sort of thing."

"Yeah, but you should've heard about it last year. Our parties are killer."

"What do you mean last year?"

Urameshi stopped at the third floor landing. "Well, y'know, freshman year."

Hiei's expression was blank.

"Wait, are you a freshman?" Urameshi immediately doubled over, slapping his knees. "Are you serious? I shoulda guessed from the height alone, but damn dude!"

Hiei gripped his knife a little harder and climbed the stairs around Urameshi. "Keep laughing."

"Don't worry, I will," Urameshi snickered, following after him. "Oh man, Kuwabara's gonna lose it."

* * *

Kuwabara did indeed lose it, because a goth freshman under five feet tall had evicted him from his own room and had convinced his best friend to go along with it. "YUSUKE! This is embarrassing, and you're letting him do this to me!" He shouted, pulling at his coiffed pompadour. "And he's doing this to you, too!"

Urameshi shrugged. "Yeah well, a bed is better than a couch anyway."

Hiei was on his bed playing on his phone, headphones on. The idiots were supposed to have left the room by now. It was almost two. "If you plan to enjoy that bed, I'd suggest going downstairs before your ugly friend exposes you both," he said, flipping through his playlists.

Urameshi covered his mouth to keep from laughing while Kuwabara aimed to lunge over the couch. "Hey asshole, watch yourself."

"You two have both made threats against me and neither you have delivered. You must realize that diminishes the impact of your words." He looked up at Kuwabara, who was standing over him, red faced and shaking, and smirked. "Not that they had any to start with."

"Why you-" Kuwabara reared back his fist.

Hiei narrowly dodged by turning on his side, giving Kuwabara a strong kick to the chest that forced him to take a step back. Hiei pushed himself off the bed and quickly ducked- Kuwabara had recovered his balance faster than he anticipated. He rushed again, and Hiei countered by punching just above his most sensitive area."

Kuwabara recoiled and toppled over the couch, landing headfirst on the floor. "YOU ALMOST HIT ME IN THE NUTS," he yelled. From this position, he just looked like a pair of angry legs.

"If you come at me again, I will hit you in the nuts," Hiei said.

Urameshi did a terrible job of covering his snorts of laughter. "Be careful Kuwabara, he is eye level with your dick. He's got a clear shot."

"I'm going to kill him!"

Still laughing, Urameshi grabbed Kuwabara by the arm and helped him to his feet. "Yeah, we got that." Kuwabara was clutching his scalp, and his pompadour had shifted positions.

"Are you finally leaving?" Hiei asked, jumping back up onto his bed with more difficulty than he'd like to admit. Damn college and its stupid lofted furniture.

"Having second thoughts?" Urameshi asked, smirking from behind his large friend. "Do you miss us already?"

Hiei let out a _humph_ as Kuwabara slammed the door behind them.

Hiei woke up early the next morning. The room was still a mess of boxes on his roommate's half, and the couch was still at an awkward angle. Hiei stepped off the bed (now he was grateful for those times Enki made him do yoga) and fumbled through his duffel back for his running clothes. The temperature here wasn't that much different than at camp, so he didn't have to buy any new clothes.

The morning was quiet. He brushed his teeth in an empty communal bathroom, walked down a silent stairwell and passed the unstaffed front desk on his way out the door. The athletes moved in a week ahead of the rest of the school, so he hoped it would stay this way for at least the next few days- though it wasn't like many college students would be up before six. The sky was still a uniform gray-blue, without a hint of sunrise. The street lights were still on, and there were even a few stars on the horizon. Hiei slung his calf behind his thigh and tugged his foot forward in a stretch before beginning his pace.

There wasn't much to the residential side of campus. Most of the dorms were vertical, so they weren't part of the scenery for long. Since nobody had moved in yet, there were no flags or post it note creations hanging in the windows. The gym, which had recently undergone a million-dollar renovation, loomed behind the ROTC building and the sports medicine complex. He'd visit it when it opened later. The dining hall next to the student union opened in an hour and a half. There was another one on the bottom floor of the architecture building, he heard, but he didn't really want to bother finding out where that was.

He crossed the main divide into the academic side of campus. Most of the buildings here were old with red bricks and white doric columns and large domes, but there was the occasional concrete and metal eyesore that was probably cutting edge in the 70's. Hiei hadn't checked to see where his classes were yet, and probably wouldn't until the first day. Hell, he didn't remember what classes he registered for.

The campus itself wasn't more than two miles long, so he'd have to at least run it twice for an adequate warm up. The sun was slowly starting to cast an orange hue along the tops of the tree lined main road. When he lost his focus for a moment, it was almost nice to see the morning like this, with the warming from the early morning light creating a thin fog of evaporation over the pavement. Misty, tranquil. Alone.

Or not.

Up ahead, where the fog thinned out, there was someone was sitting on a bench. Just reading. Or at least that's what it looked like.

At what? Five thirty? Six? There was no way they could be reading with the light this low. There's not a reason for anybody to be up, _reading_ , at this hour. Classes hadn't even started. What was the point?

Hiei didn't want to change course, but he sure as hell didn't want to pass the only other person awake on this damn campus. He hesitated. It was either avoid the stranger or continue along feeling very, very uncomfortable.

He shook off his sudden and uncharacteristic response. They could fuck off, for all he cared.

The street lights had turned off a few minutes ago, so maybe it wasn't that difficult to read in this light. Ahead of him, the sky was turning more orange by the second. Plus, he had checked his watch no problem earlier, but the bench was probably damp, and unless they had _just_ got here, then-

"Beautiful morning, isn't it?"

Hiei stumbled and stopped, barely catching himself. He didn't realize how fast he had been going. "What?" he said, with a gulp of air. He looked up, hunched over and with his hands on his knees, to the man reclined out on the bench.

He smiled. "It's lovely," he said, and gestured with his book behind Hiei. "Look at that sunrise."

Hiei turned and squinted. It was blinding. "How can you tell?" Hiei grumbled.

The man laughed, breezy and politely, and turned back to his book. "A fair point."

Hiei wiped a line of sweat from above his eyebrow and spat on the ground. When he stood up in full, he noticed the man was holding the book rather close to his face, shoulders just slightly moving. Hiei blinked in disbelief, and caught a quick flash of green eyes flitting in his direction.

This was not a polite laugh anymore. He was laughing at him, and trying to hide it.

Hiei felt his face redden, for the first time in ages, from something other than physical exertion. He reached deeply for an insult, for something perfectly rude to say, to hurl it out of his mouth with a violent force. But he couldn't formulate anything that would work, and whatever pitiful generic slur he considered died in his throat before they even hit his tongue.

Hiei ran his best 1600m of the month between the man and the end of campus.

* * *

The dining hall was abandoned at seven in the morning. The limited food options that were available were either slowly overcooking under red heat lamps or prepackaged. Hiei took a seat in a booth at the far back with five hard boiled eggs and a bowl of oatmeal. Protein. Carbs. The essentials. He wasn't very hungry. He was still angry, and his run hadn't worked up much of an appetite. He stirred the oatmeal aggressively, pretending he could pulverize the face of that man on the bench. Maybe if he added two grapes for eyes it would be more cathartic. By the time he stopped stirring to seriously consider getting some, the oatmeal had gone cold. He scraped it into a trashcan by the yet-unmanned burger stand and got a fresh batch. Aggressively eating it, he supposed, would be more productive.

"So," Urameshi said, sliding into the vinyl booth seat across from him. "Guess what?"

Hiei let his spoon drop into the oatmeal with an unimpressed plop.

"The girl living underneath you and Kuwabara is directing a freshman program that starts a week early." Urameshi said, slumping down. "Her RA got a key from a night duty housing guy and they found Kuwabara and I asleep. Dragged us back to the housing office and conducted an 'investigation'" he added air quotes for emphasis, "and then they decided that it must have been me that was responsible for the whole thing! Can you believe it? They didn't even blame Kuwabara at all!"

Hiei dug into his food and tried to listen to as little as possible.

"I mean, he wasn't _technically_ in the room at all when they came in, but they knew that he let me into the dorm. And I mean, he was in there for a while before his conscience got to him."

While Urameshi kept talking, Hiei thought back on his run. He ended up doing a full eight miles because he was annoyed with suddenly changing his route before the first two had been completed. It had given him a pretty good lay of the campus, since he had decided to screw his planned route and just check out the buildings. His time was decent. He should have pushed himself a little more, he thought, forcing the spoon laden with sub-par oatmeal in his mouth. After his quick almost-mile after that (stupid fucking) encounter he had slowed down considerably for the rest of the run. Plus, he hadn't had a chance to run yesterday during move in and needed to do some sprint sessions. The gym would open around 9:30. His coach said it had a spa-worthy sauna, and he wanted to relax his legs for a bit before he took a shower. He wanted as much alone time as possible, where he wouldn't have to deal with random assholes reading on benches on campus at 5:30 in the fucking morning ruining his privacy.

"Are you even listening? This was all your fault in the first place for kicking Kuwabara out of his room!"

Hiei smashed an egg and rolled it between his palm and the faded white dining hall issue plate, letting pieces of the shell flake off. He hoped it would end the conversation.

"Did you even hear me?"

Hiei shoved the whole egg in his mouth.

"I have to see the Dean of Student conduct!" Urameshi said, raising his voice even louder than his normal tone. "I hate that guy! He's barely older than me."

Kuwabara, who had approached from behind, thumped his plate stacked high with bacon and eggs on Urameshi's head. "Hey dummy, you roped me into the story when nobody had to know I was involved."

"You were sleeping directly in front of the room!"

"Yeah, I was trying to be lookout for your sorry butt!"

"You? Lookout? You sleep like the dead! No wonder we got caught!"

Hiei chewed his egg darkly.

Urameshi got up to get breakfast and Kuwabara took his seat, scooting in and starting on his eggs. Hiei half expected him to say something, but when he glanced over at his roommate, Kuwabara jumped a little and quickly looked away. Hiei swallowed his egg and switched over to the oatmeal.

The silence didn't last. "I think Yusuke likes you," Kuwabara said, suddenly and quietly. "And he doesn't really have that many friends."

"You can keep him." The oatmeal was sticky and unsatisfying. Next time he would add brown sugar.

"I mean, he's a good judge of character. I don't really see anything good in you, but if Yusuke does, I trust him. It might surprise you, but Yusuke is a lot like you. He's an asshole."

Hiei grunted. "I'm not interested in making friends, especially not with you." He looked up, expecting a punch, but Kuwabara just went back to picking at his eggs.

"I'm too tired to fight with you, shorty." He _did_ have dark circles under his eyes. "But anyway, he wants me to try to get along with you, even if that's literally impossible because you're mean as hell." Kuwabara ran a hand through his hair, which lacked the meticulous styling he had yesterday. He didn't seem to second-guess the blatant insult he had just thrown at his friend, behind his back no less, but Hiei couldn't disagree with him. "Anyway, he said that if we negotiated 'ground rules' it wouldn't be so bad, but really he just wants you and I to not hate each other since we're stuck together, at least for now. I don't have any rules for you, okay? So you stay on your half of the room and I'll stay on mine." He held out a hand. "Deal?"

Hiei didn't care about this Yusuke or Kuwabara, but if he said yes, they would probably both leave, and since Yusuke was walking back towards the table, he had to make it fast. "Fine," he said, after a moment's pause. He did not take Kuwabara's hand and returned to his eggs.

Yusuke returned with two plates identical to the one Kuwabara had, and nudged his friend over with his foot until he made enough room. Kuwabara's large stature took up most of the small bench, and with Yusuke's wide stance, the two barely fit together. "Move your elbow," Yusuke said, going in for bacon on Kuwabara's plate.

"Stop! You have your own!"

Evidently, they were not leaving, but they could at least be quiet. "Do you two ever stop fighting?" Hiei asked, with as much venom as he could muster.

Yusuke smiled. "Oddly enough, it's one of our better qualities."

Hiei growled, but did nothing.

Acceptance.

* * *

The three went their separate ways after breakfast. Hiei spent the rest of the morning unpacking and sleeping. Kuwabara returned to the room (their room now, he supposed) around two.

At first, Hiei didn't notice him. He had turned off the lights, shut the blinds, placed a pillow over his face and put his headphones on full blast, so it was only after Kuwabara had carefully inched about a foot inside that Hiei sat up. Kuwabara screamed.

"Uh, sorry to wake you," he sputtered once his face regained color. Or at least that's what it looked like he said. Hiei couldn't really tell with the music.

Hiei grunted and covered his face again. If they had to room together, he was going to keep their interaction to a minimum. That was their agreement, wasn't it?

"Dude? Hello?" Kuwabara said, loud enough to hear.

Hiei sat up again, his patience already wearing, and shifted one of his earphones to the side. "What?"

"Do you want a blanket or something?"

"No." He went to cover his face again before Kuwabara kept talking, but he was too quick.

"It's just that, uh, it's kinda weird that you're sleeping on a bare mattress."

Hiei glared, attempting to indicate the conversation was over.

"I have an extra set of sheets if you want them, y'know, if you get cold or somethin'."

"No." He pushed the earphone back into place, and was only vaguely aware of Kuwabara telling him to sleep well.

* * *

The rest of the first week was uneventful. Slowly, more people moved in on the floor, and Hiei managed to avoid most of them by only visiting communal spaces at odd hours and only when necessary. He met the coach for the men's university track team and held a skype meeting with Enki and his new old coach about training methods and schedules. He looked up where (and what) his classes were. He took a lot of naps and ignored his roommate and his unofficial roommate when they were all unfortunate enough to be in the room at the same time.

When his first day of classes finally arrived, he really didn't want to get out of bed.

"Having trouble sleeping?" Kuwabara asked, when Hiei got up to pee around five.

"I always get up early, idiot."

"Yeah, but normally you're leaving for your run by now," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Guess none of us are immune to Mondays."

Hiei grunted. Perceptive idiot.

If Kuwabara was still awake when Hiei came back, he didn't say anything.

Unfortunately, they both had class at nine, and they had to interact that morning despite his best efforts. Hiei tried to leave early to avoid the inevitable question as to whether he wanted to accompany Kuwabara to class, but Yusuke was waiting at the door.

"Oh, it's the troll doll's first day," he said, smiling. "Big moment for a little boy."

"Can we just go?" Kuwabara said, with a nervous glance at Hiei's darkening expression.

The two-mile stretch of campus, so short yesterday, felt like forever at an average walking speed. The company he kept probably contributed.

"Where's your first class, Kuwabara?"

"Uh, Tilton Hall."

"Aw man, that's at the end of the far quad." Yusuke put his hands behind his neck and sighed. "The things I do for you."

"Shut up man, you wanted to come. Where's your first class?"

Yusuke smiled. "It was an hour ago in Dilbrandt."

The moment Kuwabara turned to grab for Yusuke's shirt and pummel him for skipping on day one, his attention was diverted over the shorter man's shoulder. His expression brightened considerably. "Okubo! Sawamura! How was your summer, guys?"

While Kuwabara stopped, Hiei trudged on, hunching a little under his near empty backpack (okay, a Gatorade drawstring bag he got for free once). Yusuke kept with him.

"Believe it or not, that dope is the popular one." Yusuke shrugged, and hooked his thumbs in his pantloops.

Hiei found that rather hard to believe.

The two crossed the main street that separated the academic buildings from the residence halls. The academic side was awake and bustling, mostly thanks to the coffee shops in the bottom floors of the science lab building and the library. Some clubs had also set up tables on the path running along the quad, hoping to recruit young, impressionable freshman.

They ascended the small hill that opened out to the larger knoll of the quad. One table had been smart enough to set up directly next to the coffee shop by the science labs. By the looks of it, they were handing out free coffee too. Smart and underhanded. The table was swamped with people. Hiei couldn't even tell what they were trying to promote.

Yusuke jumped forward and squinted, shielding his eyes from the glare of the morning sun. "KURAMA?!"

From behind the crowd of people around the table, a person with red hair poked his head up and smiled.

Hiei's throat went dry.

Yusuke broke from Hiei's side and ran over to the table, shoving two of the girls by the red haired guy aside. "Dude, what's up? How was your summer? How much longer are you stuck handing out fliers?"

The closer Hiei got, the more his blood boiled. If his class wasn't just past the table, he would have changed directions, like he should have last time. He didn't like him. He didn't like the way Yusuke liked him. He didn't like his loud hair color or his shifty green eyes or the way he could stand the crowd of people and the loud noise in such close proximity, that he could touch and hug and smile at people and still be solitary enough to sit and read alone in the early morning hours that didn't belong to him. That he had the audacity to laugh at him and then think that it mattered enough to hide it. What a two-faced bastard.

Despite everyone else talking and chatting (and Yusuke doing his best to try to give the red haired man a noogie) the red-haired man pulled out of the crowd right in front of Hiei, flier ready. "Excuse me, would you be interested in-"

Hiei ripped the flier from his hands, crushed it into a tight ball, and threw it behind him.

"What the hell!" yelled some girl in the crowd. "That's so mean!"

Hiei kept walking.

He walked up the white stairs and past the columns into the academic building, taking the seat in the row furthest in the back of the lecture hall and dropped his bag at his feet. He kicked it under the chair with more force than necessary. He didn't want classes or roommates or their friends or anything else about this stupid college deal. All these annoying assholes kept following him around and grating on his patience. All he wanted was to qualify for nationals, go to trials, and win gold in the men's 100m and dammit, he could probably get 200m too. Who had the balls to blatantly laugh in someone's face for no goddamn reason and then give him a fucking flier with a smile? Did he even remember last week? How quickly did he forget the people he mocked? What was his name again?

Some of the class had already settled in. The room itself was massive, arranged in an amphitheatric semicircle around the stage and podium at the front of the room. He hadn't intended to be early, but there was about ten minutes left before class. It probably helped that he hurried. Hiei sunk down in his chair and pulled out a pencil, halfheartedly adding random shapes to the crude art that decorated the attached-half desk in a patchwork.

It was syllabus day, so only about half the class looked up when the teacher hurried in exactly on time. She set a large binder on the podium and removed two wrinkled papers. "Alright class, welcome to introductory Evolutionary Biology. The textbook, Johnson and Murphy 2016, is listed on your syllabus, which your TA and tutor, Shuichi Minamino, is currently distributing. Once you've received your syllabus, turn to page 3, showing grade distribution and course materials…"

Hiei closed his eyes. From what he gathered from Kuwabara's phone conversation with Yusuke yesterday (even when they weren't in the same room, those two were always talking), the first two classes, and most of the first week, was an absolute joke. They would go over the schedule and talk about the honor code and academic violations and plagiarism. Nothing he couldn't ignore. The tip of his pencil snapped. He was pressing harder than he thought.

"You'll see that you'll be required to purchase a clicker. We will be using the clicker every class to monitor attendance, participation, and comprehension of the lecture. These are available at the bookstore and come with a code you must enter on the company website. You'll log in with your student ID and enter our class code, listed below…"

His attention was already fading. The chair was surprisingly comfortable if he shifted his hips to just the right angle, and since nobody had sat in the row in front of him, Hiei propped his feet up.

"If you flip to the fourth page you'll see the tentative schedule for the semester. Tests will be cumulative and therefore will cover all material learned up until that test day. So the first test will cover up until the first test, obviously, and the second test will cover the material given from the first test to the second test as well as the first test material. Do I make myself clear? Please stay up to date on all lecture material. Tests will be based on both readings and lectures. Lecture material will not necessarily be covered by the reading…"

The more the teacher droned, the more Hiei's eyes began to droop. She was boring, the classroom was dim, and all he really wanted to do was go back to bed. He wanted to start the day over already. He let his head lean back a little bit in his chair, and decided he might just fall asleep instead of trying to stay awake through this. Just when he felt himself slipping away, he jolted up at a gentle tap on his shoulder.

Hiei gripped the chair as the attached desk flopped back to its spot between the seats. Impulsively, his feet slammed on the floor, and scattering the few items in his backpack somewhere underneath the hundreds of seats. He looked up, already fuming and ready to pounce, when his breath got stuck somewhere between his lungs and his trachea.

The guy with the red hair smiled. "Glad to see you're awake." He held out a neatly stacked set of papers, secured with a green paper clip. "You might want to keep this."

Hiei wordlessly took the paper. It was too thick to crumple even if he had wanted to.

"However," he said "if your syllabus becomes misplaced or damaged, there is always a PDF copy available online." His smile widened and softened (softened? Was it his smile that softened or was it his eyes?) "Welcome to the class."

He walked away, leaving Hiei sitting, dumbfounded, still holding the syllabus. And, for the second time that week, he felt a warmth creep up his throat and across his face.

He skimmed the top of the syllabus.

Dr. Koto Akawa

EBIO 1010

MWF 9:00 AM- 9:50 AM, Shamo Hall 315

And then there it was.

"Teaching assistant," he grumbled, watching as he continued to pass out syllabi. "Shuichi Minamino."


	2. Chapter 2

Shuichi Minamino sminamino .edu

Monday, 11:35 AM

To: Jaganashi, Hiei ; CC: Akawa, Koto N

Subject: Absences, Drop/Add

Hi Hiei,

You've been marked as absent for the past three class periods. Neither Dr. Akawa nor I have received an email from the Registrar's Office that you have dropped EBIO 1010. As outlined in the syllabus, there is a maximum allowance of three unexcused absences before deductions will be made to your final grade. Please complete the drop/add form if you no longer wish to be enrolled in EBIO 1010. Otherwise, I expect to see you on Wednesday.

All the best,

Shuichi Minamino

B.S. Candidate, Environmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology

Teaching Assistant, EBIO 1010, EBIO 3200

sminamino .edu

* * *

Shuichi Minamino sminamino . .edu

Wednesday, 10:47 AM

To: Jaganashi, Hiei ; CC: Akawa, Koto N

Subject: Absences Reminder

Hi Hiei,

This is another reminder that if you wish to drop EBIO 1010 you must fill out the drop/add form. It is available online where you register for classes. There is also a physical copy of the drop/add form available at the Registrar's Office, located on the basement level of the Student Union in the central quad on campus. However, if you do wish to stay in the class, you will be required to meet with me during the office hours listed on the syllabus. If you have a conflict during any of those times, I will be happy to make arrangements with you. If you have an excuse for your absences either in the form of a doctor's note or other accepted documentation, please bring it to the next class you are able to attend. Regardless, you will be required to meet with me to review the material you've missed.

All the best,

Shuichi Minamino

B.S. Candidate, Environmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology

Teaching Assistant, EBIO 1010, EBIO 3200

sminamino .edu

* * *

"Fuck."

"What?" asked Kuwabara, glancing up from his desk.

"Who?" asked Yusuke, who was flipping through a _Cosmo_ magazine.

Hiei ground his teeth together and hopped off his bed. After tearing through the waded papers in his drawstring bag he pulled out the EBIO syllabus. The office hours listed (1:00 PM-3:00 PM, Wednesday and Friday) were during his Japanese History and Calculus 1 classes. He really did not want to have to set up a time.

"Hey, shrimpy, what's up?" Yusuke grabbed Hiei's bare ankle and shook him. "Fill us in why don't you?"

"Touch my foot again and it will be down your throat," Hiei growled.

"Whatever." He stood up and peeked over his shoulder at Hiei's phone. "Already skipped too many classes? I'm actually impressed."

Kuwabara hunched over his work, apparently sensing the impeding conflict.

Hiei angrily shoved Yusuke away from his bed. "I warned you once." He turned, quickly grabbing his collar and pulled him in with a menacing snarl. Yusuke's smile only widened.

"I remember the good old days, skipping class, sleeping in…"

Kuwabara muttered to himself something about some things never changing. Yusuke's expression soured. "Got something to say, stupid?"

"I'm the one studying, Urameshi."

Yusuke crushed the _Cosmo_ in this fist, supposedly in preparation for a retort against Kuwabra, and immediately seemed to remember he was busy bothering someone else. Hiei had already dropped Yusuke's shirt and had gone back to his phone with a noticeably darker expression than before. No point fighting someone with the attention span of a goldfish.

"Well, Hiei," Yusuke resumed, shaking the wrinkled magazine in his direction, "I would advise you go to class and learn from my youthful mistakes."

After Yusuke had learned Hiei was a freshman, he had taken nearly every opportunity to impart wisdom on his younger acquaintance, up to and including a faux tour of the communal shower when Hiei was _in_ the shower and couldn't escape.

"I thought you went to all your classes?" said Kuwabara, swiveling around in his chair. Attempting work with Yusuke in the room was always a wasted effort anyway. "I mean, I see you going places on campus all the time."

"Stalker." said Yusuke.

Hiei turned so that his back was against the wall and held his phone close, away from prying eyes. "I forgot about it."

Yusuke flopped down on the couch, legs dangling off the armrest closest to Hiei's bed, and opened up his magazine again. Zoey Deschanel's crushed face smiled from the cover. "Sounds fake."

Kuwabara snatched the _Cosmo_. "Why are you even reading this?" He flipped through and made a face. "Their journalism is supposed to be terrible."

"Journalism? There's nothing hard hitting in here beyond the bad innuendos. Everyone only reads _Cosmo_ for their nightmare sex tips. Can you believe this shit? Who wants a donut around their dick? This is like the Krispy Kreme version of the grapefruit technique." He chuckled and helped Kuwabara get to the page he had been focusing on. "Plus, they have hot chicks pasted all over. I'm pretty sure this is secretly marketed to lesbians."

Disgusted, Kuwabara handed it back to him. "Did you steal this from Keiko? Grow up."

Yusuke shrugged and cleaned his ear with his pinky. "Want me to grab _Vogue_ for you next time?"

Hiei had already put in a change of room request. Housing hadn't gotten back to him.

* * *

Hiei Jaganashi hjaganashi

Thursday, 2:21 PM

To: Minamino, Shuici ;

Subject: Re: Absences Reminder

can't do office hours i have class then. pick another time

Sent from iPhone

* * *

Shuichi Minamino sminamino .edu

Thursday, 2:23 PM

To: Jaganashi, Hiei ;

Subject: Meeting

Hi Hiei,

Are you free from 3:00 PM-4:00 PM on Friday?

All the best,

Shuichi Minamino

B.S. Candidate, Environmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology

Teaching Assistant, EBIO 1010, EBIO 3200

sminamino .edu

* * *

Hiei was really hoping that he wouldn't have a single minute in common with Shuichi so he wouldn't have to go to fucking office hours. Why did he have to pick a reasonable time? And respond so promptly? He could just make something up-

"Why don't you just drop the class if you've been skipping just one? If you don't like it, don't do it. That's the point of college."

Hiei directed his glare from his phone to Kuwabara. Now _he_ was starting with advice.

Kuwabara went back to work. Yusuke had left after the magazine confrontation (he claimed he just wanted to smell the Britney Spears fragrance inserts), and Kuwabara had become exponentially more productive. A stack of completed work towered where there were only one or two an hour ago. "Suit yourself. It's still drop/add period until Friday, y'know, if you change your mind."

Hiei hissed. "I know it's drop/add."

* * *

Hiei Jaganashi hjaganashi

Thursday, 2:21 PM

To: Minamino, Shuichi ;

Subject: Re: Absences Reminder

ok

Sent from iPhone

* * *

He was late. If he wasn't back in the next ten minutes, he wouldn't have time to stretch before practice- which meant, unfortunately, he had to take the most direct route. On his morning runs, he tended to avoid the center of campus, especially after that first day of class. But, stupidly, he risked it, because there was no way he was going to deal with Coach Yakov (or "Jackoff", as Yusuke had so cleverly decided to call him) without having at least a quick breather before sprints.

So yeah, he knew the possibility was there, but he was really, really hoping that Minamino wasn't going to be there.

Naturally, he was.

It was just past six. The walkway lamps had turned off from the light sensors, but there were a few minutes left until sunrise. The sky was still a dark blue with a whitish trim on the horizon. Minamino was reclined a little too comfortably on the bench, head propped on the armrest, face deep in a tome of some sort.

Hiei decided to get an early start to his sprints.

By the time he looked back, he had crossed into the residential area on campus and was well on his way to the stadium fields. He couldn't see the bench anymore.

"Hiei," said Yakov. It was all he ever gave for a greeting.

Hiei nodded and retied his shoes.

Yakov was much more serious than Enki was, and he most of the time he appreciated that. Drills were demanding and repetitive, but productive. He didn't complain about his tendency to run before practice, but still made him run warm up laps with everyone else. Yakov even kept measurements of his calves, thighs, waist and biceps, "so if you gain weight I know if it is muscle or fat," he had said, pronouncing the _a_ in "fat" pronounced in a strong, Russian way.

"Alright, since you are here early, you will warm up early. Go stretch and run laps."

Without argument, he sat, spreading his legs on the synthetic track material. His head easily reached the ground with legs fully extended in a straddle, and he could almost fully twist his upper body around in the same way. Enki had always made him do gymnastic exercises (and yoga, when he was too tired to resist) to increase his flexibility, motivated, in all likelihood, by the false hope that his prized protégé would get taller. Hiei grunted at the ground. He had drunk every glass of milk forced on him, had swallowed every multivitamin. He was stuck this way, and had to push his pace faster than his competition to make up for his short stride.

A pair of electric blue and green sneakers appeared just in front of his face. "How long are you planning to stay down there?"

"As long as I like."

There was laughter, in the same haughty way Minamino had laughed but with none of his smoothness, then the sneakers scuffled away. Hiei peeled himself up and settled in a kneeling position to start on his hip flexors. Touya was running laps.

Touya was a sophomore, and was fairly well known in track circles for impressive times.

And for being exceptionally short, comparatively.

Which, of course, was what Hiei was known for.

He had already beat Touya's best time once before, but that was at least a year ago now. He had only beat him face-to-face twice in practice so far, but, considering he was the golden boy of the track team, he was off to a good start. If Touya's teasing was any evidence, he felt threatened. Good. He couldn't help the smirk that formed on his face.

* * *

By some miracle, Hiei had remembered to activate his clicker before he went to class at nine on Friday. He didn't recognize any of the terms in the questions, but had a few lucky guesses and a lucky view of the clicker of the class know-it-all. He only got two of the five questions wrong, one of which Dr. Akawa said 70% of the class had missed. Not bad for having zero background knowledge.

"Okay, moving on in our analysis of Delta G equilibrium and Change in Gibbs Free Energy…" Dr. Arakawa glanced at the clock at the back of the classroom (or Hiei thought she did- it was hard to tell from where he was sitting). "Or not. It's 9: 52. Sorry guys, we'll continue this discussion on Friday."

As the class quickly gathered their things and filed out of the classroom, Hiei felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned, arm half-shoved into his bag. "What?"

"Good morning, Hiei," Minamino smiled. "Just checking to see if you were still planning on visiting my office this afternoon. I'm encouraged that you decided to come to class."

"I've gotten plenty of reminders from you already." Hiei pushed the small desk back into place and navigated around his TA, attempting to communicate as much dismissal as he could. "I'll be there at three."

* * *

His leg was bobbing a little too aggressively. It had already loudly thumped against the attached desk twice, waking the kid in front of him. "Will you lay off? Some of us are trying to sleep."

Hiei grunted, gaze unmoved from the board. The professor was old and surly, but clear with his explanations. Attendance wasn't required for Calculus, but he liked going. Numbers were calming and went together exactly as they should. Any deviation was an error. Every base-level issue in math was not up for debate. Theoretical math was a different story, but this, at this level, was fully understood. It was the total opposite of his English class, where every interpretation was wrong or could be wrong. Even the author of a book was a biased judge of the reality they had created and established explanations always had holes. Math was easy and made sense.

But everything, every noise, every scratch of chalk or cough or creak from the desks was pissing him off.

"So, if you remember your identities, and use the chain rule…."

Yesterday he had beaten Touya's time for the first practice 100m that morning, though the second time they ran through it Touya won. But he had clearly been bothered by it. Touya took both rounds of the 200m, but both times Hiei was within a tenth of a second behind him. Yakov didn't pit the team against each other this morning, or time them in any of their exercises. Most of practice was spent on improving form on starting block departure. It was very unsatisfying.

His knee bobbed faster. Class was only half over.

However, the starting block was where a lot of people tended to lose precious time. It wasn't dragging him down significantly, but he would not deny that improvements could be made. But the whole practice was mind-numbingly slow in comparison to racing. He liked the laser focus of actual motion; attention to minute details of how every part of his body was positioned felt like an excruciating waste of time and energy.

He hit the desk again.

Sleeping beauty turned around. "Dude, oh my god, will you just-"

Hiei grabbed his pencil, the only thing on his desk, and walked out of the classroom.

The quad immediately outside the lecture hall was mostly empty, aside from a few people bumbling around. Classes wouldn't change for a bit, and there was always a lull of foot traffic on campus in the middle of the hour. There was a good thirty minutes before he had to visit that asshole Minamino, so he found a lonely table shrouded by a trellis of vines in an isolated corner near the science building complex. He tugged at a few of them, pulling off lush leaves with a crisp snap, before curling up in a metal chair, feet propped, and placing his headphones in. He sighed and closed his eyes. After five songs, he'd go find whatever office that TA was forcing him to visit.

About three songs in, he opened his eyes to change the song to see him waiting in front of him.

Hiei felt his eyes widen, and quickly averted his eyes to his phone to cover his surprise. "Don't you have office hours now?" he said, pausing his music.

"I was getting coffee," said Minamino, moving the _Every Day is Earth Day!_ mug to his lips as if he needed to prove that, indeed, getting coffee had been his reason for leaving the building. "Don't you have class now?"

"Let out early."

"And you decided to wait out here instead of coming to see me?"

Hiei scoffed. "We agreed on three."

"So we did. Do you want to enjoy your last few minutes of solitude, or would you prefer to come to my office now that we both know you're not busy?"

Hiei stood and grabbed his backpack. "Let's get this over with."

He hadn't been inside the science building complex before. The science lecture was actually held in an art building on the other side of the academic area of campus. Rumors said that architecture professors used the science building complex for examples on what not to do. Two large hallways that ran the length of the building connected irregularly on the bottom floors but were entirely separated on the upper floors, where the connections became bathrooms, dead ends, and in two spots, elevator shafts. However, it was a very sturdy building, as it was made almost entirely of concrete and asbestos. Minamino pressed the button for one of the elevators and took another sip of coffee.

They exited on the fourth floor. A florescent light flickered as they passed large sliver tanks labelled with caution signs, coated in a thick layer of frost. Hiei was pretty sure one of the rooms was leaking a gas of some kind, though the sound could have been from the ancient air conditioning vents. He paused by one of the labs with a window on its door. Equipment blocked his view, but it looked like a grad student was pipetting a purple liquid into a beaker.

"Chemistry department," Minamino said, mostly to his coffee. "Always busy with something."

A few doors down from the end of the hallway, he pushed in a windowless door identical to the other three before it. Despite the drab gray color that plastered every surface in the building, nearly every surface was leeching something green. Some vines hung over the file cabinet, while a few stalks of bamboo reached halfway up the ceiling in the corner behind the door. Five small succulents were crammed onto the sill of the tiny window facing campus. The fold-out desk had three potted flowers. The room almost looked cheery, or as close as cheery as one could get within the limited parameters.

"So," Minamino said, extending a hand to a rolling chair that was far nicer than the plastic one he occupied, "please sit."

Hiei sat and rocked back, engrossed in untangling the headphones in his jacket pocket. The chair was very comfortable, even if the wheels shifted around on the linoleum floor with every movement.

"I've printed out the slides from the lectures you've missed," he began, opening his laptop. "Lucky for you, most of this should have been covered in whatever science classes you've taken in high school. Scientific classification of species and differentiation of spheres of earth were introduced, along with basic overviews of components of the cell. Briefly Dr. Akawa discussed the differences between plant and animal cells, and as you saw in class today, we've moved into the atomic scale and movement of energy. This focus on physics will be brief and by the class after next we will return to cellular structures, so I would advise you focus on catching up on the components of the cell already reviewed before anything else. Also-"

"Why did Yusuke call you Kurama?"

Minamino looked up from his laptop, eyebrows raised. "Pardon?"

"Kurama, right? That's what he called you?"

Minamino crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands together. "Yes, he did."

He was withholding information and caught off guard. Interesting. Hiei waited, and stilled his hands from his work with his headphones.

"It's a nickname," he said, finally.

Hiei waited.

The silence that fell began to get uncomfortable, but if Minamino/Kurama felt it, he didn't show it. He turned back to his computer. "I'm assuming you don't have a proper excuse for your absences, as you provided none during our last class period. In addition to the being the basis of your participation grade, your average on the clicker question counts as two quiz grades, so I would highly encourage you to continue to come to class in order to raise your average."

"Why did you assume I was dropping the class?"

He looked up again, though his expression was perfectly neutral this time. "Normally, students who express interest in a topic pursue it by attending lectures."

"I'm interested."

Kurama closed his laptop and pushed the stack of printed lectures across the table towards his student. "Oh?"

Hiei grabbed the stack and smacked it down between two of the flower pots. "Yes."

"Do you have any questions, then?"

"Not yet. The material so far has been fairly simple."

An eyebrow inched up, just slightly, on the redhead's brow. "Then I suppose you were just getting used to the clicker technology today? It works in a similar fashion to a remote, if you're not acquainted with it. Does that explain the questions you missed?"

Hiei felt that unfamiliar warmth in his ears again. "Why do you think I missed any?"

"A teacher is expected to be prepared for visits with their students. I simply checked your automatically generated grade from today. You missed two out of the five questions, which, I'll admit, is a stronger performance than I expected."

"Don't worry yourself over one class," Hiei said. It was a weak answer.

"I'm afraid I have very little material to judge." Kurama replied. "Though I'm happy to say you've shown dramatic improvement. You've missed one hundred percent of the questions posed on the days you have not been in attendance."

Hiei stood. "I won't miss any more classes or questions of yours. Are we done here?"

Kurama didn't even bother to cover the relaxed smile that spread over his face, though he had the decency to direct it at the laptop he had reopened. "If you're satisfied with the explanations I've given you thus far."

"I'm not."

Kurama hummed a neutral response and started typing.

Fully flushed, Hiei grabbed the door handle and all but ripped it off its hinges.

"Don't forget your slides."

He reached back and snatched them, nearly sending a pot toppling. Kurama gently balanced it back onto the desk with a free hand. "Have a good evening, Hiei. See you on Monday."

* * *

At one thirty in the afternoon the next day, Hiei woke to the sound of the default marimba ringtone he hadn't bothered to change. He swiped right to accept the call, rubbing the crust from his eyes with a knuckle. "What?"

"Hiei, m'boy! How is college treating you?" Enki blared into the speaker.

Hiei groaned and rolled over to face the wall, phone still pressed to his ear.

"Are you just getting up? Since when do you sleep in?"

"Why are you calling?"

Enki whistled. "Just checking in on my favorite ball of spit and vinegar. Out partying last night?"

After a moment of silence on both ends, Enki spoke again. "Didn't think so. Were classes good?"

Hiei directed his attention to his fingernails. One looked like it had some dirt underneath it, and he picked at it with his teeth. "I guess."

"Made any friends?"

Hiei rolled back over to confirm that Kuwabara was not in the room. He wasn't. "No."

"Well, I guess you still have time. How's the dorm situation?"

"Fine."

"How's that Russian coach of yours?"

"Okay."

"Are you blowing the track team out of the water yet?"

The short fingernail splintered and he pulled off the hangnail with his teeth. His finger started to bleed a little in the corner, and he sucked at it. "Most of the team members are distance runners or hurdlers. I haven't talked to any of them. There's only one good sprinter."

"If you admit he's good, I take it he's better than you?"

Hiei moved on to chewing another nail. As if he didn't know everything about the track team here.

"So, yes?"

"My best time is better than his. I've beaten him a few times in practice."

"What can you learn from him?"

Typical response. "All that I've learned so far is that Yakov is a better coach than you. If I stay with him I'll beat Touya's times consistently by next season."

"You wound me."

Hiei shrugged, fully aware that Enki couldn't see him.

"I googled him-"

"I already know his stats." Of course he called just to needle him over being second-best. Enki already knew Touya's stats before Hiei applied to the school.

"I know you know his stats, but I also know that you can beat his averages. Why aren't you?"

"My times here are the same as they were with you. I'm not getting worse."

"I trusted Yakov to make you even better." Enki sighed. "Kick that Touya kid's ass."

The second fingernail split and cracked open. When he pulled his finger out of his mouth to inspect it, a good quarter of it had broken off from the rest of the nail. Hiei balled his hand into a fist. "Yeah."

He hung up and rolled onto his back, wondering if the track was empty.

* * *

It was almost three when Hiei arrived at the stadium. He probably shouldn't have bothered to go today, but Enki's encouragement had made him want to run for a bit out of spite. This was, by far, the worst hour to exercise outside- if he remembered the notes he skimmed on chlorophyll, the hottest part of the day was three o'clock, after the earth had time to absorb direct sunlight at noon. He tugged on his shirt a little to cool himself off. The stadium was less than halfway across campus from his dorm and he was already starting to sweat. Touya was already there, sitting on a bench in the shade. He pulled his lips away from his water bottle. "Practicing on a Saturday? Ambitious."

Hiei dropped his bag on the ground next to the bench and retied his shoes. "Not really."

Touya wiped sweat from his face and flicked it towards Hiei's bag. Touya was probably three inches taller than Hiei by a generous estimate. By the look of his hair, he had gone as the Joker for an early Halloween party but the washable hair dye hadn't quite faded out yet. Hiei was pretty sure he would have gone as the Jared Leto version. For some reason, his bangs clung to the color better than the rest of his head. The overall affect did not look good, but it went with his faux-edgy Odd Future sweatshirts he wore when he left practice. His sunset and banana leaf snapbacks usually covered it up, anyway.

Hiei stared forward and flexed his hamstrings, ignoring the sideways glances Touya kept sending him. He was going to kick his ass, regardless of how sweaty his bag ended up.

Satisfied with his stretches, he started at an average pace to warm up. After three laps around the track, Touya was still resting on the bench, watching. He paused as he rounded the last bend past the bench to grab a starting block, positioning it directly in front of Touya.

"You know, you might not want to go directly into sprints so early in your practice. Trust me, to really get better, I'd say spend a lot of time on strength training. You can't just keep running the same exercises and expect to improve. Changing your foundation, at this point, is the best way to improve your times."

Hiei leaned down and placed his feet on the starting block and pulled up the timer on his phone.

"Just like a great novel was never written without a good outline-"

"Shut up."

Hiei sprinted around the track as fast as he could push himself. He turned the corner, once, then twice, keeping a brutal pace, nearly tripping when he smashed the stop button on his timer.

Fourty six seconds for a quarter of a mile.

Normally, he was about four seconds off with hitting the start/stop buttons. A quarter of a mile was just over four hundred meters. Fourty two divided by four was-

Hiei took a breath. Ten and a half seconds. Considering his pace had to wear out and the path was curved, he could have been just under ten for the first hundred meters. Despite being out of breath, he grabbed the starting block and shoved it back on the rack with the rest of them and picked up his bag without resting.

Touya's better times were around 10.4 in practice, and his average in competition was 10.3. "Maybe weekend practice isn't ambitious so much as it is unnecessary," Hiei said, swinging his bag over his left shoulder.

Hiei kicked over Touya's longboard on his way out of the stadium.

* * *

 **AN:** FF won't let me put in emails, so I gave up.


	3. Chapter 3

"r u free tn?"

Yusuke texted in that overly abbreviated way that Hiei absolutely hated. He would accuse Yusuke of trying too hard to be casual if he didn't know very well he actually didn't give a shit.

"why"

As the three blue dots appeared on Yusuke's half of the screen, Hiei went back to looking at the slides Kurama had printed for him. He had no plans on missing any of the questions on Monday, though he hadn't really taken any notes on Friday's class. He assumed that most of the questions were derived from the current or previous lecture. He probably should have been going to class. He also shouldn't have set such a lofty goal for himself- as if he could get every question right for the whole semester. He'd probably get an email from Kurama the second he did. It didn't help that Dr. Akawa's slides were devoid of nearly all text. Without any explanation, the labels on the cellular structures looked garbled and confused. He pushed the slides to the back of the library cubicle and opened his laptop. Wikipedia would be a better teacher than either of those two. A ding from his phone indicated a response from Yusuke.

"dude its saturday! get rekt"

Hiei frowned. "what does that mean," he typed, omitting a question mark. Hopefully that articulated the disdain he was going for.

"jesus do u live under a rock? it means lets get drunk" was his reply. Hiei was not swayed.

"there will b girls" he quickly added, as if that would help his case.

He had immediately regretted his choice to give Yusuke his number. He had been badgered about it incessantly for the three days after their small heist until he finally gave in, under the condition that he left him alone for the rest of the afternoon.

"studying, not interested"

"yeah but keiko is bringing her stuff 2 work on too so you both can be lame and read and drink at the same time"

Keiko, he had learned, was an old friend of Yusuke's who acted as a mediating force on his temper and vigilantism, according to Kuwabara. He had no desire to meet her.

"sounds like a bad party"

"i mean its in ur room so ur gonna b there anyway"

"what do you mean it's in my room," Hiei typed, with malice. "you don't even live there"

"yeah but its my friends and kuwabara's friends sooooo ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"

"you can't have a party in my room"

"haha ok short stuff c u later"

Hiei slammed his phone on the desk and decided to deal with that later. If Kuwabara had agreed to this without his permission, they both could expect another lock out. He pulled up the Wikipedia page on ribosomes and scanned the first paragraph before noticing the time. The dining hall was going to close soon, and he hadn't eaten since breakfast. He sighed and closed his laptop. May as well study while eating and kill two birds with one stone.

* * *

The dining hall was as busy as it usually was at eight on a Friday. Most kids had eaten early, he supposed, in preparation for the parties later that evening, if he could apply Yusuke and Kuwabara's weekend pattern to the school at large. The semester had barely started, but on the three Fridays that they had lived together (he hated to admit it, but Yusuke was a third occupant), Yusuke would pick up Kuwabara around nine and Kuwabara returned either very late at night or very early in the morning. Kuwabara barely made any noise when he came in, so Hiei never said anything about it. Besides, he slept more comfortably with Kuwabara gone; his snores were about as quiet as a pile-driver. Hiei found a high table in the back, meant for one to three people, and pulled up the Wikipedia page on his phone. He pulled out the cell diagram slides and a pen from his backpack, and arranged his plates and papers so that everything was mutually accessible. The ribosome, he copied between bites of tepid lasagna, is a complex molecular machine, found within all living cells…

"Bio 101, Huh?"

Hiei looked up with a frown. He should have worn headphones.

Touya smirked, peering at his work. "I took that class. Got an A, too. Just so you know, the tests are killer. Way too specific, if you ask me." Hiei hadn't. " You could do fine the upper-levels no problem knowing about only half the info in that class."

"Uh-huh."

"Though I guess nobody ever really retains all the information."

… that serves as the site of biological protein synthesis (translation). Ribosomes link amino acids together in the order specified by messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules…

"The TA for the class has really good supplemental lectures. He's a genius. You should go."

"I don't need any help," Hiei said, through a mouthful of lasagna.

"Suit yourself." Touya adjusted his snapback and hoisted his longboard farther up his arm. "See you at practice."

Ribosomes consist of two major components...

* * *

He stayed at the dining hall until it closed at nine and he could no longer reasonably avoid his room. The library was also closed, and he was too lazy to bother walking to the gym for a late-night sauna excursion. He plodded back to his room, shifting his drawstring backpack to one shoulder. It was starting to rip where the corner of his laptop rubbed against the cheap polypropylene. He should probably get a bag that was actually meant for the amount of stuff he jammed in it, but the ones at the campus bookstore were overpriced and the bus to town wouldn't run until the following Monday. He took the stairs up to the fourth floor, like he usually did, and tightened his grip on his bag at the noise coming from his room. Yusuke and Kuwabara, made plenty of noise alone, but he could tell there were other voices in the mix, along with a low beat from some dime-a-dozen hip-hop artist. So Yusuke hadn't been bluffing. He grunted and pushed open the door.

The conversation paused when he opened the door. There were two people on the couch, with their backs turned to Hiei. Yusuke was on Kuwabara's bed and Kuwabara was at his desk. "Sup dude," Yusuke said, all smiles. "Grab a brew."

"I told you I didn't want people in the room," Hiei said, dropping his bag at the foot of his bed.

"Yeah, well, too late."

The brown haired girl on the couch turned around and held out her hand with a pleasant smile. "You're Hiei right? I'm Keiko, nice to meet you." She was plain, but she was at least polite. She didn't look like any force that could control Yusuke. Hiei only grunted in response.

"Hey man, show some respect," Kuwabara said, standing.

"Like the respect you showed me by directly ignoring my wishes?" He was hardly being fair. Kuwabara didn't even have a way of conveniently contacting Hiei, since he had intentionally withheld his phone number from him. Nothing like emailing your roommate to ask about having a few friends over.

"It's okay," Keiko said, turning her gaze to Yusuke. "I'm used to dealing with brats."

"Ouch," Yusuke said, "you wound me." He clutched his chest for affect, and mock-fainted softly onto Kuwabara's pillow.

"If you really wanted to show that you recognize how mean you are, Yusuke, you could at least sell your offense a little more!" Keiko snapped in reply, shuffling the papers on her lap.

"Okay, first of all, that was a great performance," Yusuke said, finishing the rest of his beer in one gulp and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "And if I was that bad, you wouldn't be friends with me."

"Hey," said the girl with the blue hair, suddenly sitting up straighter and pointing a beer at Hiei. "Weren't you the guy who crumpled up that flier from Kurama?"

"So what?"

"I hope you realize that flier was for volunteering at a children's hospital," she said, flipping her ponytail. "It's a program that takes science experiments to kids with cancer so they can do the projects they miss at school."

"Heartwarming," Hiei grunted, face impassive, though he did feel a nudge of guilt. Ok, definitely not one of his finer moments.

"Don't bother Botan, he's always like that." Yusuke leaned over Kuwabara's bed and grabbed a beer from the 12-pack, tossing it across the room. "Up high, dickweed."

Hiei let the beer land on his bed. It rolled next to his knee, and he left it there. "I have no intention of participating."

"So you came only to ruin the evening?" Kuwabara asked, sinking back into his chair.

Hiei recalled Yusuke saying that Kuwabara was a mopey drunk, though he looked pretty sober. "I came to take my room back."

"Whatever, Hiei." Yusuke said, picking up the 12-pack. He dumped the three remaining beers onto Kuwabara's bed and cracked another. "Kuwabara, turn up this song. Also, I thought you said Shizuru was gonna give you two packs of Natty?"

"Take what you can get," he said, complying with the music request. "She didn't have to buy us any."

"I brought mixers, by the way," Botan said, unzipping her backpack and handing a few Cokes and some orange juice to Kuwabara, who put them in the mini-fridge/microwave combo. Her attention span seemed to be on par with Yusuke's. "Can you ask Shizuru for liquor next time?"

"Please," Keiko said. "I hate beer."

"You're not even drinking!" Yusuke said.

"Yeah, well, I might, if you ever had anything that was palatable."

"Someone reviewed her SAT words today."

"Look," Kuwabara said, interrupting their tiff, "my sister only lets me pester her for beer because I promised not to tell mom and dad she's smoking again." He moved aside a take-out box to make room for a stray Sprite. "And I'm not gonna press my luck."

Hiei eyed the soda with desire. He hadn't filled his water bottle on the way back into the room, and he was thirsty, but definitely wasn't going to drink the beer on his bed after he had already made a snide comment about it. He crossed his arms and sunk down on his bed until his calves were hanging off the mattress.

"Keiko, what do you have to study for, anyway? It's barely week two," Botan asked, placing her chin on her companion's shoulder.

"Ugh, I have a French test Monday. Language tests start way too early." She stuck out her lower lip in a pitiful pout. "And French is my worst subject!"

"Weren't you going to study something?" Yusuke said, glancing over at Hiei.

"Yeah, Biology, but I got bored with it."

"Oh, the intro class?" said Botan. "I took that last year."

"Are you going to tell me that the TA is amazing and I should hang on his every word like it was gospel?"

"Well-"

There was a knock at the door. "Finally," Yusuke said, swinging his legs over the bed.

Keiko had already climbed over the back of the couch. "I got it," she said, swinging the door open. "You made it!"

Kurama pushed his way in, nose slightly red from the chill outside. "Sorry I'm late."

Hiei froze. He hadn't really accounted for the fact that Kurama was one of their friends.

Kurama opened his large coat and pulled out two bottles of wine, both red, to Botan's obvious delight. "My hero!" she squealed, taking both and placing them on the floor in the square of carpet between the couch and the rest of the furniture. "Did you bring a bottle opener?"

"Nobody ever calls me a hero for bringing booze," Kuwabara said.

"That's because all you ever bring is cheap beer- not that I'm complaining," Botan said, as if she just hadn't been complaining.

"Look, if you don't like shitty beer, give it to me," Yusuke said. "A real man can stomach anything!"

"You guyssss, I did my best" Kuwabara whined.

Kurama was leaning over the couch behind the girls. Keiko had returned to her place and had evidently abandoned her papers when wine was introduced to the equation (and, if Hiei had heard right, after some gentle jibe from Kurama about putting studying off until tomorrow morning that left her giggling.)

"If you want it, Yusuke, you can have mine. I was only nursing it to be polite." Botan passed her can over Keiko's head, leaning around Kurama who was busy uncorking the wine.

"Sweet," Yusuke said, nearly knocking the can over onto Keiko when he missed grabbing it the first time.

"Be careful!" Keiko yelled. "I just bought this sweater."

"Is it too late to return it?"

"Yusuke!"

"I don't think you should be encouraging underage drinking," Hiei said, loud enough to silence the room. He was glaring directly at Kurama.

Kurama looked up, popping the cork off a wine bottle. "Oh, hello Hiei."

"Isn't this highly irresponsible of you? Partying with kids?"

"Well, to be fair, I am nineteen," Kurama said, handing the open bottle to Botan. "Though yes, I usually make it a rule not to make acquaintances with students in my class. I'm sorry I didn't notice you. If it would make you more comfortable, I'll leave for the remainder of the evening."

"He's our year, Hiei," Keiko said. "He's not some pervert corrupting children."

"I am, however, an RA," Kurama added, "and am in charge of policing these exact sorts of activities in my building. So I may not be a pervert, but I acknowledge I am a hypocrite." He smiled and peeled off his backpack, resting it on the top of the couch. "I also brought rum, if anyone is interested."

Botan grabbed the rum from Kurama before he could even finish removing it from his bag. "You really are a hero!"

Kuwabara pulled out the mixers from the mini fridge. "I guess we're going with Coke, then?"

Hiei was fuming. They had all gone back to talking amongst themselves, and he was being absolutely ignored by everyone. Hiei opened his mouth to complain again when Yusuke jumped up next to him.

"Who said you could sit on my bed?" he said, ready to push him off.

"Hey, relax man." Yusuke was still smiling. "And if you don't want this beer, I'll take it."

"Are you drunk, or just stupid?"

"Not drunk yet," Yusuke said. "These beers are only like eight percent. Hey Kuwabara, make me and our little demon a rum and coke."

"Are you sharing?" Kuwabara asked.

Yusuke looked to Hiei, eyebrows raised.

"I don't share," Hiei said.

"Two rum and cokes," Yusuke said, cracking the beer.

* * *

Hiei finished half of his rum and coke in five minutes. By smell alone, he could tell it was mostly rum. It didn't taste as bad as he had expected it to, though, and it didn't take too much peer pressure from Yusuke to make him drink the second half as quickly as the first.

Yusuke was spending most of his time between drinks yelling at Keiko and Kuwabara, Kuwabara was yelling at Yusuke and attempting to hold a mostly one-sided conversation with Botan, Keiko was talking to Botan when she wasn't trying to win an argument with Yusuke, and Botan was engaging with mostly everyone, butting in where appropriate, and occasionally asking for Kurama's opinion. Kurama answered when implored but was mostly watching the situation unfold, hiding his expression every once in awhile behind the reusable plastic cup he had brought from home or requesting that Yusuke aim for the recycling bin and not the trash can when he launched his empties across the room.

And, rarely, he made eye contact with Hiei.

It wasn't hard, since Hiei's eyes didn't really move from him.

"When was the last time we actually left campus to do anything?" Botan asked, to nobody in particular.

"You and Kuwabara are the only ones with cars, so that's on you two," Keiko said.

"Yeah, but I mean like when did we go do something in town? For real?"

"Who cares," Yusuke said. "Campus has everything we need."

"You're going to end up a 6th year senior. Some of us are concerned with the world outside of college." Keiko drank more of her rum and orange juice. The Coke had quickly disappeared.

"Oh, yeah, none of you guys have visited my room yet!" Yusuke said.

"I have," Kuwabara grunted. "I pass the broom closet every time I go into the house."

"You're living in a closet?" Botan said. She shook her head. "I don't know why I'm surprised."

"He's not even supposed to be living on campus! He's not registered as living in the frat house either, since we could get in trouble."

"What ever happened to sticking your neck out for a brother, Kuwabara?" Yusuke said. He had stolen Hiei's pillow for his lap. The rum and coke was carefully balanced between the pillow and his chest, and he held the last empty beer can between his knees. If he had been holding on to all the cans he had gone through, he would have been a one-man vending machine.

Kuwabara ignored the question. "When's your meeting with the Dean anyway?"

"Monday," said Yusuke, mumbling into his drink. "Koenma can suck my dick. And none of this would have happened-" He pointed dramatically to the far end of the couch, almost hitting Hiei in the face in the process, "if you had fucking let me stay at your house!

Kurama, as always, was unmoved. "I hardly think living with my mother would be an ideal situation for either of you."

"She loves me though! She said I was welcome any time!"

"That was an invitation for dinner, not a rental agreement."

Yusuke grumbled something so himself and dropped the topic.

Hiei glanced between the two of them as the conversation quickly steered in another direction. Botan was complaining about her chemistry lab registration when Hiei jabbed Yusuke's side.

"Uh?" Yusuke said, looking around before remembering that his bedmate was located at least four inches below his sightline. "What?"

"What's the deal," Hiei said, gesturing as subtly as he could while ensuring Yusuke would get what he meant, "with you two?"

"With who? Kurama?"

Hiei took a deep breath. He had nearly forgotten Yusuke was so fucking stupid. "Yes."

"Oh," Yusuke said. "We're friends?"

"I got that."

"So?"

"You know his mom?"

"I mean, yeah."

"Okay."

"Yeah, she's cool." Yusuke took another sip. "And?"

"So…" Clearly that line of questioning was getting him nowhere. "What's with the nickname?"

Yusuke smiled and settled into position. Hiei had a feeling this would go on for a while. "Okay, so it's like, Kur- is nine, right? He's like this cat, you know, he's clever. Always lands on his feet. Nine lives, and-"

"Yusuke, you ass, you didn't remember his name and that's literally some shit you slurred!" Kuwabara said, slapping him on the back of his head. At some point he had moved to the chair on Hiei's desk, closer to his bed. Hiei decided not to say anything about invading his half of the room this time.

"Okay, true, but it totally makes sense, looking back."

"You're an idiot."

Hiei looked over at Kurama, who was obviously listening.

"So what? Kurama is a way better name than Shuichi anyway." Yusuke smiled wider, spreading his arms out in a big shrug. "As long as you don't call him-"

"Yusuke."

Everyone's attention snapped to Kurama. He wasn't loud, but the terse address seemed to affect everyone but Yusuke.

"Mama's boy!" He laughed hard at his own joke, even though nobody else did.

"Oh, shut up!" Keiko said. "As if you're not a mama's boy too."

"And a teacher's pet. Genkai should have expelled you by now," Botan added.

"I am NOT a teacher's pet!" Yusuke shrieked, launching into a tirade.

Hiei watched Kurama the whole time. He had visibly relaxed when Yusuke had let out the insult. Hiei had the feeling that Yusuke had been going to say something else before the interjection. Kurama was sitting on the edge of the couch closest to Kuwabara's bed, which Yusuke had freed up half an hour ago. Plus, his bedmate was getting even more unruly with every sip. Maybe it was the rum telling him to do it, but Hiei wanted to move somewhere else. So he slipped off his own bed and hopped on to Kuwabara's, feet dangling inches from the armrest Kurama had settled against.

"Hey," Hiei said. It sounded lame even in his own ears.

"Hello."

"So…" Whatever guidance his rum had been offering had quickly died. All Hiei could do was swallow and try to focus on something other than Kurama's green eyes and whether they were or weren't aimed in his direction (they weren't) and how his bend in his own knees barely fit over the curve of the mattress he sat on.

"Hey!" Yusuke shouted suddenly, pointing at Hiei. "Where's your drink!"

"Gone," Hiei said, grateful for the distraction. He was actually still holding his cup, but he was pretty sure Yusuke was trying to ask whether or not he still had a drink, and he went with it.

"Kuwabara, chop chop, no cups empty."

"Why don't you make something?" Kuwabara was leaning on the fridge/microwave. Mixing drinks looked like the last thing he wanted to be doing. Hiei hadn't been keeping track of how much his roommate had been drinking.

Botan stood and opened the fridge, pulling out the remainder of the orange juice and the Sprite and nudging the bottle of rum from the floor by Yusuke closer to the couch. "Mixmaster Botan is on it!" she said, a little too enthusiastically. Botan swiped Hiei's cup.

The few seconds without his cup to busy his hands felt like forever. He wished he had his phone to play with, but all he could do was pretend that he hadn't just failed to start a conversation with someone he really wasn't that interested in talking to, anyway, but was the least awful option in the room. And holy shit his eyes may have been playing tricks on him but he was pretty sure that Kurama, that bastard, was making that same damn face at him again that he had when he first saw him, that condescending smile and shifty eyes lit up by the bright morning that made him want to-

Botan shoved the drink back in his hands. "Bottoms up!"

"Bitch!" Yusuke yelled, jumping off the bed and fumbling for Kuwabara's phone on the far desk. "I will die if I can't listen to that song literally right now."

Kuwabara peeled his eyes open. "Do you need help with the password?

"That's a dumb fucking question Kuwabara," Yusuke said. "It's one-one-one-one, and you should definitely change it. Botan, while you're up, make me another drink."

"Maybe you should stop for tonight, Yusuke," Keiko said.

"Maybe- you should- be less lame."

"I'll do it if you ask nicely this time," Botan said, though she was already making him one.

Hiei was pretty sure he was sweating a lot, and of all places, he felt it most in his feet. He hadn't taken his shoes off yet, but they would definitely smell if he did now. He had really wanted people to leave, and that might help, but now he was feeling kind of okay about this whole thing, and there was also-

"So?" Kurama asked, loud enough only for Hiei. He was watching the scene with Kuwabara and Yusuke unfold, but leaned a little closer to the bed. His body language was showing his preoccupation, but Hiei was sure- okay, pretty sure- that he was talking to him.

"So," Hiei said, ignoring the crack in his own voice and taking a big gulp of his budget tequila sunrise, "I heard you tutor?"

* * *

Kurama taught supplemental instruction lessons which basically regurgitated the in-class lecture but from the point of view of a student who already knew the information. He also did private tutoring through the advising center, but that was only for classes he didn't teach.

"But I thought you didn't need my help?" Kurama asked.

It felt like a needle in his side. He should have expected that Kurama would assume that's why he asked. "I don't," Hiei snapped. "Just- making conversation. A teammate mentioned it."

"Oh?"

He couldn't tell what that meant. "Touya," he said. "Do you know him?"

"Yes." Kurama said. "He's taken full advantage of my services."

Hiei wasn't really sure what that meant either, and took another gulp.

"You're on the track and field team with him, then?"

"Yeah. I run. Sprints."

"Hm."

"I like sports."

"I suppose you would."

Hiei crushed the bottom half of his cup in his grip. Fuck. That was so fucking stupid, of course he liked sports. "I mean, more than class. Classes. I came here for sports, not school."

"Then you're in good company." Kurama nodded towards Yusuke, who, along with Botan, was trying to drag Kuwabara up from his seat to dance to Single Ladies. "Yusuke's the same. Kuwabara has learned to apply himself, but I'm sure his original intentions were similar."

"I don't think you're here for academics, either."

"Really?" Kurama looked up at Hiei, that half-smile playing on his lips again. "And what makes you say that?"

"You just want to show off."

"And running quickly isn't your way of showing off, Hiei? We all have our strengths."

Hiei opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and watched his roommate suffer at the hands of his friends so he wouldn't have to see Kurama's smug expression. "Shut up," he mumbled, but was pretty sure Kurama wasn't listening anymore.

"Botan," Kuwabara whined, swaying on his feet. "You can't make me dance with you to this after you rejected me."

"Don't be a baby," Botan said. "Did you give Shizuru my number yet?"

"And you can't reject a man and tell him to give your number to his sister!" He was leaning on a cackling Yusuke, who was slapping his larger friend's back with a little too much zeal. "That's just cruel and unusual."

"Oh, but it's not personal!" Botan swayed around, trying to get Keiko to join them in the little space between the beds and the couch. She said something about being 54 weeks deep in some celebrity Instagram and was refusing to budge.

"I'll have you know, I've moved on!" Kuwabara pushed Yusuke off and stood at his full height, a foot shy of reaching the ceiling.

"As if anyone could be interested in you," Hiei said, though he was making eye contact with a confused-looking Yusuke rather than the victim of his insult. Yusuke squinted back, clearly unsure what the hell Hiei was happening.

If Kurama had any opinion, he didn't voice it.

"Hey, you stay out of this shorty!" Kuwabara said. "I bet none of you know her so you can't say anything about it anyway."

"Is she Canadian?" Yusuke asked, attention returning to the matter immediately at hand. "Did you meet her on the internet?"

"Shut up Urameshi," Kuwabara said. "Her name is Yukina and she's beautiful and she goes here and- so there!"

Hiei dropped his cup.

"Hey man, why you gotta spill on my side of the room?" Kuwabara said, stepping over the couch between Keiko and Kurama. "Ugh, gotta get paper towels now-"

Hiei watched as Yusuke and Kuwabara stumbled quickly out of the room and back in, piling up paper towels on a wet spot about a centimeter wide by one of Kuwabara's yet-unpacked boxes. He didn't say anything when Kuwabara launched insults his way or continued to lament about his unrequited feelings for Botan, or when Keiko announced that she wanted to go home and asked Botan to walk her. Mid-cleaning, Kuwabara and Yusuke abandoned their work at Yusuke's suggestion about meeting Kuwabara's friends at the house for some "action", whatever that was, and only started blinking again when he heard Kurama ask him a question.

"What?"

"I asked if you were alright," Kurama said. "You're pale as a ghost."

"Yeah." He wiped the back of his neck. Suddenly all the sweat from before had gone cold.

"Maybe you should go to bed."

Hiei growled. "Don't tell me what to do."

Kurama smiled. "You sound better already."

"Get off my bed, dude," Kuwabara said, reaching underneath Hiei for a box of clothes. "I need to get stuff. And everyone else, get out, I'm gonna change."

"Where are you boys going after this?" Botan was still lingering by the couch, though Keiko was already walking out.

"After the house?" Yusuke shrugged. "Dunno, I'll text you. Kurama? You in?"

Kurama stood and brushed off his jacket. "Not tonight, I have some business to take care of."

"You say not tonight every night!"

Kuwabara started changing as everyone was piling out. "Yeah, because he's doing stuff Urameshi! You should try it sometime."

"If you're headed back to the dorms, can you walk with Keiko and I?" Botan said, following behind Kurama as he picked up his backpack on his way out.

He smiled. "Of course."

"Hiei? Are you coming?" Yusuke asked.

Kurama and Botan said goodnight and closed the door.

"Why would I ever want to be seen with you two?" Hiei snapped, tossing his shirt off and moving over to his side of the bed to change into his pajamas. "I'm going to bed."

"Whatever. Done yet, Kuwabara?"

"Yeah." He adjusted the collar on his polo and stepped over the couch. "See ya, roomie."

"Don't ever call me that again."

Kuwabara closed the door louder than necessary.

When Hiei was positive that the two were not returning anytime soon, he grabbed his laptop and flung it open, nearly snapping the hinges. He didn't have a Facebook, but Kuwabara did, and he was pretty sure that idiot wouldn't have any privacy settings. He was right. Hiei clicked on his friends list and found the search box. He didn't even know her last name, at least not anymore. He didn't remember what it had been all those years ago, either.

He pressed enter.

Of the thousand friends Kuwabara had on Facebook, there was only one Yukina.

His sister.

* * *

 **AN:**

I'm kinda just throwing out characters now, but I have to get everyone introduced somehow. writing scenes with a lot of people is really annoying, especially since it's all dialogue. I hope it makes sense.

hope you like this chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

"You're cute."

"Huh?"

Kuwabara brought the barbell down onto his chest a bit more abruptly than he had on his last rep. "Shut up Urameshi, I'm trying to practice."

"You're going to have to clarify, pal."

"For Yukina, obviously." He pushed the barbell up. "I'm gonna ask her out."

Hiei hadn't been paying attention. After the two had left for some party the night before, he had spent the better part of the night on his laptop before he fell asleep with it open well past two. In the morning, the he had been forced (okay, heavily encouraged) to join Yusuke and Kuwabara at the gym, since he had again skipped his run (which he blamed on the drinking instead of stalking, though he felt fine when he woke up). He had hoped it had all his imagination, an alcohol-addled mind making up memories- but no, it was real, and Kuwabara, ugly, stupid Kuwabara, was making plans to hit on his long lost sister while working out. He sucked in a breath and held it. He had been doing a lot of that anyway this morning, since the gym smelled awful. Hiei did his best to channel his anger into his crunches instead of throttling Kuwabara outright and without explanation.

"You're not convincing at all," said Yusuke.

"Well maybe you should show me how it's done, Romeo."

"Maybe I will."

"Okay, then." Yusuke leaned over from his position spotting Kuwabara.

Hiei let out his breath. It was hard to hold it while exercising. .

"Hey," Yusuke said, beaming down at his companion. "You're really cute."

Yusuke caught the barbell when Kuwabara nearly dropped it on his neck.

Kuwabara rocketed up in a sitting position, hitting his forehead smack into the bar. "OW!"

Yusuke reset the barbell and laughed until it turned into hacking. Kuwabara rubbed his forehead, biting his lip to keep himself from whimpering.

"Is it my turn yet?" Hiei asked, sprawling out on the smelly purple mat. Hopefully, he could redirect the conversation. If anything could disturb Kuwabara's narrow and poorly managed train of thought, it was physical pain.

Yusuke slapped the bench at the spot where Kuwabara's face had been. "You're up."

Hiei laid down on the bench and grabbed the bar.

"Aren't you gonna adjust that?" Kuwabara asked, having regained the full use of his vocal chords. "I mean…"

"What, exactly, do you mean?" Hiei said, lifting the weight and bringing it down onto his chest. Oh, fuck, that was heavy.

"I mean, I'm not trying to offend you or anything, but I've been lifting weights for years. That's like, my thing."

Hiei struggled through a second rep.

"You have to be kinda meaty for wrestling, so there's a lot of bulking up involved…"

Rep three. If Hiei had wanted to respond, he wouldn't have been able to. Yusuke peered down, fat smile plastered still on his face. If he said anything about how hard he was struggling, Hiei's next rep was going to send his nose halfway into his occipital lobe.

Kuwabara continued. "Look, you don't have to prove anything-"

Hiei reracked on the fourth and glared from the bench. He withdrew a gulp of air as subtly as possible, which was not very subtle at all. "I'm not proving anything."

"Yeah," Yusuke said. "The point is that your deadlift is Kuwabara's warm up."

Hiei's arms were already shaking. Good god, he was living with a monster. A monster that wanted to date his sister. "Try to keep up with me on a treadmill and we'll see who's warming up."

"Okay, stop your pissing contest, let's hit some bags," said Yusuke, already heading over to a rec room . "My warmup doesn't count for much when I gotta spot you guys for ten minutes."

"When you agree to be gym buddies with a guy, there's gotta be some give and take," Kuwabara said, trailing behind. "And spotting me is not a big job."

"You always drop your weights! Literally, when the song changes you freak out and nearly bash your face in."

"That was ONE TIME!"

The bags themselves were in a studio that was also used for zumba, taikwondo, and the biweekly abs-buns-thighs class. Yusuke opened one of the equipment closets and drug out three sandbags that suspended from the ceiling. The design wasn't half bad for a college gym.

"Alright," Yusuke cracked his knuckles. "Time to punch stuff."

Hiei rolled his eyes. "You really are here on an athletic scholarship."

"Shut up. You've already had your hubris slapped in your face once today." Yusuke smiled. "And yes, I did learn that word in my English class on Friday."

"I'm surprised any of your brain cells survived from Friday until now."

"Me too." Yusuke pulled his fist back and sent the bag rocketing forward, smashing it back to the full extent of the chain. It swung back forward, and with every jerk towards him Yusuke drove it back twice as hard.

Holy shit. He just… kept punching.

Kuwabara didn't bat an eye. He was busy making his bag bounce around, though at a noticeably weaker pace than his friend. Hiei was suddenly much more grateful that none of Kuwabara's punches had landed in their tussle a few weeks ago. After a moment of consideration, he pushed the bag a little bit to test the weight. Really heavy. And his arms were still shaking a bit from lifting weights. At least he had done some other arm work before the bench press, so they couldn't claim it was just Kuwabara's superior muscles (he would probably call them something like that- unless he'd actually named them, which was entirely possible) that had turned his limbs into noodles.

The other two kept on punching.

Kuwabara glanced down at Hiei with a shit-eating grin. "What, ya scared?"

Yusuke laughed between punches. "Guess you don't have to hit too hard. You're the type to bring a knife to a fistfight."

Hiei snorted. "I'd rather be punching a body than a bag. What's the point of practicing without an opponent?"

Abruptly, Yusuke stopped, turned, and positively beamed. Hiei was pretty sure his face was going to freeze like that one of these days. "Do you wanna fight?"

As if that was a question. "Yeah."

"I see you took my advice."

Ugh. Of course.

Touya strolled in with the same relaxed look he always wore with some tall, freckle faced member of the track and field team in tow. It was physically painful for Hiei to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.

"Saw you guys in the weight room earlier. I guess you were listening to me a little more closely than I gave you credit for," Touya said, pushing his bangs off his face.

"Hardly."

The other guy (James? Jim?) seemed to be one of the supposedly rare friends of Yusuke. He was definitely foreign. "Aye Urameshi, hew'ze tha righ hook uh yers fairin'? Top notch still, ha?"

"It's what I'm known for. I was just about to test it on Hiei's face."

His name Jin, he was pretty sure. Did something with the field part. Not interested. "Ah, thatzo? What'cha do? Ye don't look so mad."

Hiei only understood that he was talking to him because he pointed at him directly. "We were going to fight for fun."

"Ahhhhhh, now I gotcha. Reminds me uh the time I met Urameshi, yessir, did the same te me, went righ for the kisser he did."

Which was more annoying, Hiei wondered- Jin's voice, or the fact that Touya was vaping in a gym?

"I think I'm done here," Hiei said, and walked out of the room, making sure to hit Touya in the shoulder on the way out. Oh god, his smoke smelled like pistachio. Who vapes pistachio smoke?

"Tell me there's not weed in that," Yusuke said.

Touya laughed. "Who wants to know?"

* * *

Yusuke and Kuwabara caught up to Hiei outside. None of them had had breakfast yet, so they all made their way to the dining hall and each grabbed whatever form of protein looked most desirable and an entire plate of fries to supplement. The breakfast options had long since been cleared away.

"Why are they always out of ketchup?" Yusuke moaned. He slid into the back booth that had become their go-to dining hall spot during the last few weeks.

Kuwabara slid into his designated seat next to him. "Can we get back to the important stuff? Like me asking out Yukina?"

Hiei bit his tongue, entirely by accident.

"Yeah, whatever," Yusuke said. "Have any pictures?"

Kuwabara pulled out his phone. "Hold on, I added her on Facebook."

"And she accepted? Wild."

"It's not wild Urameshi, I'm a nice guy!"

"She's a freshman, right? She probably would accept any friend request she got from someone who goes here." Yusuke smirked. "I mean, you act like a freshman."

"Shut up! No I don't!"

Hiei was too busy being angry to be insulted.

"Oh, she actually is kind of cute. Do you only go for girls with weird blue hair?"

"Her hair is teal, first of all. And no."

"She's also short as fuck," Yusuke said, sliding his finger across the screen to the next picture. "She might be shorter than Hiei."

"Give me the phone."

The two idiots looked up, both with jaws open.

"You wanna see? The pictures?" Kuwabara asked. "Of Yukina?"

Hiei glared. "Yes."

"What? Really? Why?"

"Because if you're going to have a conversation about someone's physical appearance where I'm eating, I may as well keep up with the topic." He held out his hand. "Give me the phone."

"Alright, dude." Yusuke slapped it in his hands. "Damn, I think that's the first time you've expressed interest in anything that wasn't working out."

He hadn't been able to see more than her profile picture yesterday- her senior portrait- though when he googled her full name there were a few pictures from her high school field hockey team from when they had gone to some regional sports conference. Her Facebook page, when it wasn't locked, had so many pictures he didn't know where to start: with friends at lunch, on vacation at the beach, walking a dog he assumed was hers, on Christmas morning, at summer camp, volunteering at an animal shelter, and one embarrassing picture of her asleep on a bus with her sweatshirt inside out. In these pictures, he could see that yes, she was his height, or roughly the same, with his same deep brown eyes, and, before she dyed it, his same shaggy black hair. She used to have a tooth gap, but her braces in pictures from middle school probably fixed that. Was it a tooth gap he remembered, or had she been missing her front teeth? The pictures didn't go back that far. Though they had a few matching features, none of them detracted from her beauty. She had shallow dimples and pink cheeks and long eyelashes and the sweetest smile, and in any picture where she laughed, everyone else was laughing too.

"I said, what do you think, Hiei?" Yusuke said.

"What?"

"Isn't she the most beautiful thing you've ever laid your eyes on?" Kuwabara looked like he had skipped cloud nine completely and landed on the tenth.

"Uh, she's okay," Hiei said, failing to hide the hoarseness in his throat, even though his expression was as close to neutral as he could make it.

"Oh, damn," Yusuke said, whistling. "You may have some competition, Kuwabara."

This time it was Hiei that joined Kuwabara in shock and confusion.

"W-What does that mean Urameshi?!" Kuwabara said. Hiei said nothing, since his mind had been wiped just about blank.

"Well, something had to happen for Hiei to a) be interested at all and b) not react with a cold stare. Plus, most guys like girls who are as tall as them or shorter, which leaves Hiei with a very shallow mating pool."

Kuwabara shrieked. "Mating pool!?"

"As if I would be interested in anyone that could catch Kuwabara's interest," Hiei said. It was hard to be convincing when panic was preventing him from adopting the cold stare Yusuke seemed to need for reassurance.

"As if Yukina would be interested in a shrimp with an attitude problem!"

Okay, he was ready to be angry now.

"You're right," Hiei snapped, "The only thing more despicable than me is an empty-headed, chauvinistic, self-righteous asshole who thinks he's entitled to someone's affection because they accepted a Facebook request." He stood. "Maybe if you weren't so absorbed with your own vanity and determining your comparative attractiveness, you would take the time to get to know her more than superficially before obsessing over her like some golden cow. I may not be interested in her, but I know for a fact that anyone deserves better than you. And you can throw out my trash for me, in exchange for my having wasted an ounce of effort trying to be friendly. Bye."

Hiei stormed back into his room, grabbed his backpack, laptop, and charger, and spent the rest of the day, and most of the night, in the library.

* * *

At five, he woke up with a purpose.

The first part of his run was pointless. He didn't even work up a sweat.

He found the bench, forced himself into the part that wasn't occupied by a long pair of legs, and leaned back.

Kurama closed his book. "Good morning?"

"How do I clear up a misunderstanding?"

Kurama tapped the book to the bottom of his chin, and drew his legs close to give Hiei space. "Well, what parties are involved?"

Thank god. He was going with it. He hadn't really thought about what would happen if he didn't. "Take a wild guess."

"In my experience, explaining plainly has worked best with both Yusuke and Kuwabara. Kuwabara is more prone to listening to a case if background information is presented, though Yusuke quickly stops listening if you talk for too long." He paused. "That is, assuming this misunderstanding is between you and them."

"Yeah."

"Out of curiosity, may I ask what the problem is?"

Hiei crossed his arms.

"Just to be clear," Kurama said, "I only ask because full knowledge of the circumstances would allow me to attune my advice to your particular situation."

"I know."

"But you won't tell me?"

"No."

"Alright, then." Kurama shifted so they both faced outwards from the bench. "By the way, Yukina is in your biology class."

Hiei's head snapped up. " What? "

"Not in your section, but she is one of my students. She also frequents my supplemental lectures."

Nevermind. This was definitely not going as planned. "Why," Hiei said, trying to phrase his words carefully and speak slowly, though it sounded more like he was sputtering them out- "would you bring that up?"

"Well, you had quite the reaction to her name the other night. Does this have anything to do with your misunderstanding?" He smiled, and Hiei wanted to punch him. Really badly. "After all, Yukina has been the only topic of interest for Kuwabara since he met her- at least when he speaks to me. You must realize he's a very sensitive soul."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"He's got a crush, and he's scared of you. If you threaten him in any way because of your connection, however innocent, with this girl, he's not likely to take it well."

"And what do you think is our 'connection'?"

Oh god. He shouldn't have asked.

Kurama pursed his lips. It reduced the degree his grin spread, but not by much. "The identical height sort of gives it away."

Damn strong genes. "I'd hardly call that a sharp observation."

"So you are related?"

Hiei took in a deep breath. "Yes."

Kurama pulled his backpack into his lap, unzipped it, and put his book inside. "So the issue is that Kuwabara knows that the two of you are somehow connected, and it's caused a misunderstanding between the three of you?"

"Not exactly. Plus, I don't think Yusuke cares."

"Okay, so this is just between you and Kuwabara." He stood and tossed on his backpack. "Are you headed somewhere?"

"Uh, I have track practice in the next half hour."

His smile was a little bit softer this time. "We can mull over the situation and I can walk you over."

* * *

The morning wasn't as nice as the first time he ran into Kurama on the bench, but it was passable enough for Hiei to call it a decent morning. There wasn't a brilliant sunrise, but there was a nice rosy glow behind the clouds. He was grateful he had left plenty of time to get to practice, since Kurama was walking much slower than he would have preferred, though the walk still went quicker than he expected. "So you really just assumed that because I dropped a cup and Yukina is short that we're related?"

Kurama shifted his backpack. "Well, you also have the same eyes. I'm expected, as a teacher, to show some degree of interest in my students."

"We don't even have the same last name." Hiei pulled his phone from it's spot in his arm holster and flipped through his apps. "And when did you start memorizing what your students eyes looked like? That's just weird."

"They're an unusual brown, is all. Don't fault me for being observant. Speaking of, do you intend to disclose how, exactly, the two of you are related? You're being intentionally vague."

"Maybe I am."

"Then you definitely are."

"This wasn't your business in the first place."

"You made it my business when you asked for advice. Word would get to me anyway. I've known them longer than you two. And to be clear, I'm more familiar with Yukina's eyes than your own."

Hiei stopped. "What?"

"I see her much more often both in and out of class than I see you, first of all." Kurama held up his own phone. "Further, Kuwabara sent pictures."

"Pictures? What pictures?"

"Certainly, ones you've already seen."

"What. pictures." Hiei reached forward to grab it, and Kurama raised his arm above his head, making a soft tut-tut sound.

"Give me that."

"Surely you must realize how childish this is."

"I don't care." He jumped and pulled at his arm to try and get it, but Kurama remained rigid.

"As if that would work." Kurama waved the phone a little, just to piss him off.

"Shuichi Minamino. I hardly expected you to pay a visit this morning."

Not again.

Touya, fucking Touya, butted into their very important conversation.

For his part, Kurama smiled, which made the situation way worse. "Oh, hello. I would stay to chat, but unfortunately my morning is quite full." He pushed Hiei off with relative ease and put his phone back in his pocket, slipping between the both of them and back onto the main road of campus. "Enjoy your practice."

"Aren't you going to explain the little scene I just witnessed?" Touya asked. It was the first thing Hiei had heard him say that sounded even remotely genuine. Hiei couldn't really put his finger on it, but it was definitely a different tone than normal.

"I'm already late, so I'm afraid you'll have to ask Hiei. See you around." Kurama waved, and was off.

The two sprinters exchanged a look.

"So you know him?" Touya asked, switching back to the tone that he hated.

"Obviously."

"How well?"

That was unexpected. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason, Guess we have a mutual friend." Touya stretched an arm behind his back, pulling it further into the stretch with the other.

Hiei glanced between Touya, who was walking inside, and Kurama, who was quickly fading from view, and headed after his teammate into the gym. "I guess so," he grumbled, to no one but himself.

* * *

 **AN:**

Sorry for the wait! This chapter is Short and Bad but I'm actually trying to figure out a plot for this. I didn't think I would get this far OTL

I'm going to run out of douchey stereotypes for Touya. I need to stop making him pop up everywhere, but the gym and practice are perfectly acceptable places for him to be, so I'm letting myself slide on this one.

I also need to stop with dialogue. I can get WAY too into exposition when I want to, but banter with these guys is just SO EASY.


	5. Chapter 5

To say Touya creamed him was an understatement. Hiei was annihilated, destroyed body and soul, with each and every drill and timed practice. Hell, Hiei could have died, done his penance, and have been reincarnated, and Touya would still be lapping him with ease, green bangs suck to his sweaty face. By the end of it, the only words he could remember after practice were "try to keep up." He wasn't even positive Touya had even said that, but he may has well have. Hiei's times weren't bad, either, though he hadn't got in an ideal warm up. Touya just ran everything that day at competition level. Even impassive Yakov was nearly swooning (he had said "very good," and not just "acceptable," after his last drill.) As usual, Hiei was furious after coming in second. It was not a position he was used to, and he definitely did not like it.

He stewed the whole way to Bio, and spent most of the first part of the class angry doodling on the desk instead of taking notes. He was so absorbed in one involving a dagger and a pair of eyes that he nearly missed a clicker question.

 **What type of genetic material is shaped in a ring structure?**

 **A) DNA**

 **B) Mitochondrial DNA**

 **C) rRNA**

 **D) RNA**

The answer was obviously mitochondrial DNA. Easy. Child's play, even. She had explicitly written the answer on a slide last week. Hiei clicked B and returned to doodling. Why did people keep saying this class was difficult? All he'd done was skim a few Wikipedia pages and he'd turned into a savant.

"Okay," Dr. Koto continued, aggravatingly cheerful as always, "now a question about today's lecture so far."

 **Which end does the RNA Polymerase polymerize ribonucleotides an RNA transcript?**

 **A) 3' end**

 **B) 5' end**

Shit.

The answer was 50/50 on a basic question that he definitely would have got if he had paid attention five minutes ago. A dramatic majority of the class would guess right, meaning it would be particularly embarrassing to get this one wrong. He guessed right (3' end), thanks to a wandering eye and a (very) informal sample of what the people immediately closest to him had selected. More people were present than last week, and unfortunately that meant that they mostly ended up in the back around the seat where he had decided to take up permanent residence for the remainder of the semester between the hours of 9 and 10 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Useful for cheating, annoying for his extreme aversion to socializing.

The rest of the class went fine. he had even started scribbling a few facts down until the last question of the day.

"Alright, just before we end for the day, let me give you one last question. This one will be closer in content and phrasing to ones you'll see on the test in a few weeks. Always read carefully!"

 **Which of these codons will result in the production of an amino acid, and which nucleotide determines the produced amino acid?**

 **A) UGG, Guanine**

 **B) UGA, Uracil**

 **C) UAG, Guanine**

 **D) AUG, Uracil**

Hiei read the question. Then he read the question again. Then he read the answers.

The on-screen counter of submitted answers, usually ticking up by thirty seconds in, had only registered three answers out of the 160 people.

Why phrase a question in an intentionally confusing manner? Were they trying to trip students up?

"I hope you remember your amino acids!" Dr. Koto said, bouncing back from her podium to the front of the class. "So let's look at this question, since you guys seem to be having a little trouble. What are we looking for ?" There was a quiet creaking of a chair somewhere on the left side of the classroom, but everyone remained silent. "Well, what codons don't produce amino acids?"

He scanned the crowd for red hair. Kurama was in his usual spot in the wings near the front wearing some large, ugly cardigan that was astonishingly unseasonal. Hiei felt in his gut that Kurama had something to do with this, and glared with as much focus as he could, hoping that his waves of hate class could solidify and stab through the chunky mustard-colored monstrosity Kurama draped himself in. Maybe he wouldn't be as popular if the class knew he was responsible for ruining their GPA. Hiei wondered if his guts were as red as his hair.

If Kurama noticed, he didn't look up.

Hiei only ceased his glaring when other kids started to leave. Fuck. He missed the explanation.

"Don't forget, your TA offers supplemental lectures and has available office hours, and you can always reach me by email or in my office," Koto said, packing up her things in a rush as always."

Yeah. As if.

* * *

It wasn't far, but he didn't want to risk heading back to the dining hall to get something for breakfast. He wanted to find a good spot to survey and only had a few minutes before she would head to the lecture hall. He could have stayed and waited, but it could have been oddly conspicuous if he stayed for the 15 minutes in between classes, especially if he left immediately after the rest of the class filed in. He'd already picked the grassy patch right outside the east of the building at the closest entrance to the hall to wait for her to pass by. Hiei needed to see Yukina with his own eyes to know that she was real.

He laid out on the ground, letting the soft grass brush his cheek. He was starving. He'd drained his water bottle twice over in class, and had risked missing a clicker question by slipping out to refill it. Hiei opened his drawstring bag and examined its contents. Normally he had a few stray protein bars somewhere in the mess, but he'd only left a few wrappers and a paper clip at the bottom of his bag. Hiei sighed. He really needed a bigger backpack.

"And how did I know I'd find you here?"

Hiei looked up and squinted into the sunlight. Kurama was wearing that neutral-content look he always had on, more predictable than his horrible clothes. Hiei grunted and turned back to the entrance. "I'm busy. I don't have time for you to toy around with me."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

Hiei didn't look back over when he heard Kurama sit next to him, preferring to keep his eyes ahead. Kurama tapped him with something, though, and Hiei rolled his eyes, but still took the bait. "What?"

"My phone," Kurama said, as if it was obvious. It sort of was, since he was holding it at eye level inches from Hiei's face. "You can send the pictures to yourself, if you want."

Hiei snatched it and flipped through. There were only three. Two of them were in the dining hall by herself and the last one was some classroom he didn't recognize. He looked from the phone to Kurama, and immediately back to the phone. Infuriatingly, Kurama's face hadn't changed. He exited from the zoom and saw that the three pictures were included in a text conversation under the title "yusuke's bitchezzz." The rest of the pictures from the group looked like memes he was certain Kurama had no role in. Hiei couldn't have been less surprised. He selected the three pictures of his sister, typed in his own number, and pressed send. When Hiei looked back again, Kurama had laid all the way down on his back, one leg crossed over the other, arms neatly but casually folded behind his head. His eyes were closed, soaking up the sunlight like a cat. Hiei looked back at the phone. What was etiquette for this? Did he add himself as a contact? Did he say thanks via text later? No, that was dumb. Besides, Hiei's concern about his sister didn't have anything to do with him, anyway, no matter how much Kurama thought he knew, and Kurama might take any response as an invitation to bother him in the future. He snorted and gently tossed the phone onto the other man's stomach, immediately turning his attention back to the front door and repositioned himself with his fists propping up his chin. "Thanks," he said, mostly into his own hand.

A few kids were making their way to classes now from the residential side of campus. Hiei scanned the crowd for blue hair, intently darting his eyes across any short body he saw in the groups moving towards the academic buildings. His stomach growled, a harsh, loud gurgle that reminded him of the pain that was starting to make itself known. "Are you hungry?" Kurama asked from behind him. Hiei assumed he hadn't sat up.

"No," Hiei said.

There was a long silence. More kids started to pour out of academic buildings and into other ones like a well organized group of ants taking the least cost path across grass, through flower beds and around benches to their next class. Some eschewed the sidewalks entirely, even the ones on bikes.

"For the record, Yukina comes in through the front entrance. She has a class before this one and it's farther towards the north end of campus," Kurama said, standing. Hiei looked up as Kurama as he brushed himself off.

"Oh," Hiei said, but Kurama was already heading back inside.

Was he really so easy to read?

He checked his watch. The crowd had died down in the transition period. He probably missed her, and he wasn't going to walk back into the classroom just for a possible glimpse of his sister and the certain knowing look that Kurama would give him. Or maybe Kurama would be busy. He probably had to observe the other section.

Hiei really wanted more water.

* * *

Yusuke walked into room 418, hopped up onto Kuwabara's bed, and made himself comfortable. "That sucked," he said, picking at something in his ear.

Hiei pulled out an earphone. "Did you take Kuwabara's key?" Hiei had definitely locked the door. He had been avoiding Kuwabara even more than usual the last two days and had taken certain precautions.

"No, copied it, duh." Yusuke turned onto his side and jingled his stretchy keychain. "I had my conduct hearing today."

Hiei didn't really want to hear about it. He put his earphone back in, but turned down the volume.

"Koenma let me off, as usual, but I still got an ear full. Like, why even call me in if he's not going to do anything about it? At least I spent all the time waiting for him to call me in talking to Botan. Did I tell you she's his assistant? She gets paid to just sit there. It's insane. Maybe I really should look into that desk job, y'know?" Yusuke noticed Hiei wasn't listening and snapped aggressively in his direction until he took out his earphone again.

"I heard you."

"Really?"

"Yes," Hiei grunted, switching from a tab about strength training exercises for runners to one related to the homework he was supposed to be doing. He felt his phone buzz next to him, and glanced down at the name. Yusuke. The message just said "hi." Ugh. "If you're desperate for attention, go talk to Kuwabara," Hiei said.

"He's busy. Have you two made nice yet?" Yusuke smiled at his phone and tapped out something else.

Hiei gave up, and closed his laptop. He was starting to get why Kuwabara always gave up working whenever Yusuke walked in. "No."

"I still don't get why you went off on him like that," Yusuke said, "but he's more confused than anything."

"Do you two always argue each other's cases? If he's mad, it's not my problem."

"Okay, it's not really your M.O. to go in on someone for being a chauvinist pig. Which, by the way, he's not. Kuwabara is just too shy to talk to any girl normally."

"Whatever."

Yusuke twiddled his thumbs a bit. "Speaking of your M.O., you seemed to be a little out of character the other day."

Hiei crossed his arms. "What do you mean?"

An evil grin spread across Yusuke's face. "I heard Kurama got your number."

Hiei jumped. That was only two hours ago. "Yeah? So what?"

"It took me days of bugging you to get your number. You never even offered it to Kuwabara, who actually lives with you," Yusuke said, tucking his hands behind his head and settling deeper into Kuwabara's bed. "The three of us actually had a little bet going, to see whether Kuwabara or Kurama could get your number first. Kuwabara, obviously, would make the most sense, but you got pissed at him and, well, Kurama can be… oddly convincing."

No. There was no way Kurama had told him that he had pictures of his sister just to get his number. Fuck. Was that true? No. There was no way. Hell, Kurama told Hiei he knew they were related, that they had a connection in the first place- Kurama brought up Yukina before he had this morning. But how would he have known that it would be something he'd latch on to? Aside from, well, jumping to try to get his phone. God. That was really embarrassing. Fuck, he didn't even think about how embarrassing that was until now. Did he really do all of that to win a fucking bet? And, fuck, he made it look like a favor. Like he was doing something nice. Would he have offered any of that up if there wasn't a stupid fucking bet?

Is that what I'm doing?

Fuck,

Hiei stared at Yusuke, jaw clenched. It wasn't a big deal, anyway. It was just his phone number. But it twisted at him in a way that it shouldn't, that he was so easily played over something so trivial. His face was starting to burn. How quickly had Kurama passed along to Yusuke and Kuwabara that he had won their stupid bet?

"He didn't even have to ask you, did he?" Yusuke said, still smirking.

"It wasn't like that," Hiei said, tensing his arms. "he was sending me something class related." Hiei was lying, blatantly, and before he could finish speaking Hiei already knew Yusuke could see right through him.

"Email wasn't enough?"

Hiei looked away, glaring. Fuck.

"Anyway, I already sent your contact to Kuwabara. I'll send you his. Shit, dude, I'll add you to the group chat." Yusuke hopped off the bed. "Now quit pretending to study and help me plan this party for next week."

"Since when do you plan any of your parties?" Hiei was so, so grateful Yusuke had changed the topic.

"Since now. The other ones were just with friends. Well, Kuwabara's friends. But now we actually have to put on big ones open to the university. Y'know, classic frat scene, big house parties. Give a place for potential pledges to try to mingle with the brothers. And meet some girls." Yusuke paused. "Or guys, if you're into that."

"Not into that," Hiei said, a little too emphatically.

"What? There's nothing wrong with liking dudes." Yusuke raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. "I'm into guys."

Hiei's eyes widened. "What?"

"Yeah, if someone's hot, I'll go for it. I've hooked up with guys before."

Hiei balked. Yusuke just brushed off liking guys like it didn't matter at all. He hooked up with guys. Like it was normal. Which it definitely was not. It was weird. Hook ups, as a concept, were already weird, but a gay hook up was on another level. Yusuke, scrappy, athletic, frat bro Yusuke, liked guys. He'd never met someone who had been openly gay, or bi, or whatever. He'd done no socializing at the training camp, really, and even if there was someone there that had been attracted to the same gender, he wouldn't have know about it. And before that, well- "What about Kuwabara?" Hiei asked.

"Nah, he's super straight. It's almost cute how weird he can get about it sometimes. As if it's some bad boy rebel thing." Yusuke kicked some of Kuwabara's laundry under his bed, where he kept the rest of it. "And in case you're wondering, you're not his type." Grabbing his phone, he turned towards the door. "Come on, let's go, you can interrogate me about my sexuality while I pick out what booze I wanna get for this party."

One of the things that made Yusuke tolerable was his total lack of fucks. Yusuke was friendly, but he really just didn't care. The second they left the dorm, Yusuke was pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, complaining about something that Hiei was sure really didn't annoy him that much. That was how he is. He just… said whatever he wanted, waving his hands to add to his animated expressions, nearly burning Hiei's face in the process twice.

"Give me one of those," Hiei said.

Yusuke fished in his pocket and pulled out two, tossing out his first onto the quad. "Didn't know you smoked," he said, smiling and sticking one between his teeth and handing the other to Hiei. "You seem a little too regimented to willingly fuck up your lungs."

Hiei let Yusuke light his cigarette and shrugged. "I don't anymore. Before I started running I did."

"Dude, you're like, eighteen," Yusuke said, kicking up grass as he walked across the well-manicured lawns. "Haven't you been running for a while to get to your level now?"

Hiei snorted and inhaled, shrugging again. "Running seriously, then."

If he wanted to press more, he didn't. Yusuke leaned back and blew two smoke rings, one after the other, smiling as usual. "Know any tricks, shorty?"

"Don't call me that," Hiei said, "and no. I'm not out to show off."

"Well, I am," Yusuke said. "Watch this one." He blew one large ring and put a smaller one through it, the smoke rising and disappearing into the afternoon light. "I'm pretty good."

Hiei hid his nascent smile with his hand and took another drag. "Not bad."

The walk to the frat house wasn't far. It was an old building, and not very well maintained- not surprising, considering it was occupied by up to fifty boys in their budding adulthood. The paint on the blue shudders was peeling, but the white paneling was mostly intact. There was a tall staircase leading up to the front door, nearly blocked by large black trash bags that had accumulated along the railing. The most distinctive feature, however, was the large concrete path out front leading up to the house, between the bottom of the stairs and the sidewalk. It had been painted white, probably with house paint, and underneath the white there was clearly some brightly colored design. "Amateur muralist?" Hiei asked, flicking his cigarette butt into the street.

Yusuke crushed out his own cigarette under his foot on the way up the stairs, stepping between trash bags. "Nah, we paint the front for every big party. It's kind of a tradition." He pushed open the front door, and Hiei followed after him inside.

The front room was spacious but ill furnished. There were two couches in about the same condition as the one Yusuke and Kuwabara had brought into Hiei's room a month ago, along with a few fold out chairs and a ping pong table. A few relics of what may have been a stately residence remained in the form of a grand brick fireplace and long, varnished wooden shelves on the wall. There was a mounted deer head on either side of the room next to the fireplace. Underneath them were dozens of pictures of pledge classes past. If there was any order to them, it wasn't immediately apparent. A few guys were lingering around in the front room, one on his laptop and two others on the couch, tossing a football back and forth.

"Sup, guys," Yusuke said, waving halfheartedly as he walked through the front. The guy on the laptop nodded and the two throwing the football didn't look up.

"Assholes," Hiei muttered as he shuffled behind Yusuke, who grabbed the handle to a small door under the stairs.

Yusuke shrugged and pushed open the door. "Yeah, but they're alright."

The room wasn't much. There was a bed on the floor, a fold out desk with no chair, and laundry on the floor. Two boxes, yet unpacked, were shoved into the corner and blocked a quarter of the bed from view. They probably weren't going to be opened any time soon, since it was being used as a shelf for empty beer cans.

"Nice place."

Yusuke laughed and flopped onto his bed. "I mean, it's free." He patted the spot next to him, and pulled down the ashtray from the fold-out desk, resting it on the floor in front of the bed. Hiei sat.

"There's beer in the cooler if you want any," Yusuke said, lighting another cigarette. "Pass me one."

"It's noon."

Yusuke blew another smoke ring. "So what?"

Hiei dragged out the cooler from underneath the desk and pulled out one for each of them as Yusuke booted up his laptop. He handed one to Yusuke and cracked the other for himself.

"That's my boy," Yusuke said, holding out a fist.

"I'm not going to fist-bump you."

"Can you lighten up for, like, a full minute?"

Hiei rolled his eyes and sipped on the beer. The cooler hadn't done much to keep it below room temperature. "Take what you can get. I'm drinking your shitty beer in a closet while you blow smoke in my face."

Yusuke smiled and blew smoke directly into his face.

"Fuck off!"

"Aw, c'mon, you had to have seen that coming." Yusuke pulled up the internet and started googling party ideas. "Time to Pintrest this shit."

Hiei made a face. That was definitely gay.

Yusuke started talking about wanting to do a classic tropical theme one while the weather was still warm out, and floating the idea of inflatable pools, but Hiei wasn't listening. Against his own will, he actually wanted to ask Yusuke about himself, like when he started smoking, or when he knew he liked guys. Hiei took another sip. God. When was the last time he wanted to talk to somebody?

"Hello? Earth to Hiei? God, you're the worst."

Hiei blinked and took a sip. "I'm listening. All your ideas are bad."

"Then make some suggestions!" Yusuke said, slumping down onto a pile of sweaters and underwear.

Hiei rolled his eyes. He was probably the worst person to be brainstorming frat party ideas. Hell, the idea of a theme party in general made him cringe. "I don't know, get drugs?" he said, heavy sarcasm intended.

"Shit, you're right," Yusuke said, nearly jumping at the realization. Hiei wasn't sure if Yusuke understood that he was kidding. Regardless, Yusuke pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number by heart. "I should see what he's got."

Of course he had taken that seriously. "Who?"

"My supplier, duh?" Placing the phone between his head and his shoulder, Yusuke went back to browsing for discount packets of leis. "Okay, these are basic as hell, but I think they'll work," he said, turning the computer more in Hiei's direction. "But only four colors? Come on."

That was so typical. "I feel like you don't really have the disposable income for drugs if you can't afford a ten color pack."

"First of all, the party stuff is all from the frat's budget. And second, I get a discount." Smiling, Yusuke pulled up a new tab for tiki torches and shushed Hiei when the call went through. "Sup dude, can I interest you in a large purchase? Yeah, no, I know, shut up. Oh, it's for another party. No, as if. How much do you have available? Okay, yeah."

Hiei sunk down. He hated listening to other people's phone calls. If he wasn't involved, he really didn't give a fuck. Plus, he wasn't really interested in drugs anyway. He'd be regularly screened for them pretty soon when the regular season came around. At the camps and under-18 competitions, it hadn't been a thing, supposedly for the welfare of kids, but in college it was going to become an issue. Weed wasn't exactly performance enhancing in the traditional sense, but it wouldn't look good to be caught with it in his system, even if it was getting more accepted. Though wasn't Touya smoking that one time? In the gym, no less? Honestly, what the fuck was that?

The season didn't actually start until the spring semester, so if he really wanted to, he maybe- might be able to get away with it for now. Despite getting into plenty of trouble as a kid, he'd never actually gotten high. All the (two) joints he smoked never did anything for him. It had probably been bad quality. Whatever. And, anyway, it was more of a social thing, and he never had enough friends to warrant smoking a lot. Wow, even in his own head, that sounded really sad. He took a gulp of the now-lukewarm beer and tried not to think about it anymore.

"I'll probably get a lot of requests from the guys, so like…. A few ounces minimum? I'm pretty sure that'll be gone within the week. Yeah, cool, I'll pick up later this week. I'll text you." Yusuke hung up, and went back to browsing. "I wonder if I can get some of those Easter island heads."

"Who's your dealer?" Hiei asked. He was pretty sure Yusuke had to smoke pretty regularly, since most of the butts in his ashtray were definitely not from a packaged cigarette.

Yusuke smirked. "Nobody you know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

There was an odd twinkle in Yusuke's eye that unsettled Hiei more than it should. "He goes by Yoko."

"What kind of small time college drug dealer has an alias?" Hiei snorted. Some self important ass, probably, who wore beanies all the time and lost one of his back teeth a few years ago but never got it fixed.

"Okay, I'm the small time drug dealer, and he's my supplier, so not the same thing. And it's actually kind of a big deal, since he only has one strain that he deals with, so this is like, high quality shit." Yusuke put his fingers to his lips to mimic smoking, as if Hiei didn't know what he meant. "Stuff that goes up the food chain."

"Wait, you deal?" Hiei asked. He really shouldn't have been surprised, considering he got into fights for fun and was drank beer at noon from a cooler in the broom closet he was sleeping in. Not that he was much better.

"Only to friends and the guys in the frat. It's pretty much why they keep me around. What? You interested?"

Hiei put his beer up. "No. I think I've learned enough about you for today."

"What, afraid of a little weed?"

"No," Hiei said, quickly standing. "But I do have class in half an hour."

"Whatever," Yusuke said. "But if you need that green, you know who to find."

The phrase 'that green' alone made him want to immediately terminate the budding friendship Hiei reluctantly admitted had started to form. Hiei hadn't even closed the door before Yusuke was yelling back at him that he was getting the inflatable pools, regardless of what Hiei thought.

* * *

Japanese History went as expected, and the annoying kid that sat in front of him in Calculus had moved, but Hiei was not taking any notes. This pattern was becoming concerningly frequent. He kept finding himself glancing at his phone, at the three pictures Kurama had sent to him, though he wasn't even looking at the pictures anymore. When he put in Kurama's contact, he just left it at his first name- well, his nickname. He opened the contact, edited it, and added 'Minamino' for the last name. He had let the phone go back to the lock screen before he opened it again. Yusuke had added him to their group chat (and had given him the nickname 'bitch #3', no less), but nobody had said anything yet. Kuwabara might still be mad at him, and Kurama was probably busy. He still hadn't put in Kuwabara's last name. Did he know Kuwabara's last name? He added "Urameshi" to Yusuke's contact, only half sure of what it was.

"Jaganshi? Can you derive this for the class?"

Hiei's face snapped up, and scanned the board. Fuck, there was a lot on it.

"Um, which one?"

Someone from the back started chuckling. The professor pointed to an equation on the far end of the board. "Please pay attention during the lecture next time."

"Yeah, well, the derivative is 3x2+4." Hiei went back to his phone.

"Well, that's… correct. Well done."

"Any time," He said, slumping back into his desk.

For the fourth time he opened the chat, chewing on the inside of his cheek. His name was probably something embarrassing in Yusuke's phone. And Kurama would probably just put his full name in. He was like that.

Oh, fuck.

Hiei closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Stop thinking about this. He pulled up Kurama's contact again, and added "Shuuichi" for his middle name. He flipped the phone over on his desk so he didn't have to look at it any more.

Office hours ended at the same time Calc did. Kurama would probably still be in his office.

He should not go.

But he was going to go.

Fuck , he thought, shoving his stuff into his backpack as other kids started filing out of the classroom. Fuck .

He didn't even want to ask him about the stupid number thing. He would have given Kurama his number if he asked, but aside from the bet, Kurama wouldn't have had a reason to ask him for it. Not that he would have wanted him to have it.

Fuck , Hiei thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The buildings weren't far apart, and he made it over faster than he would have at normal walking pace. His office was on the fourth floor, right? The elevator was on the 8th floor now. It would be faster to just take the stairs.

Why are you doing this? He wondered somewhere around the second floor. He had no reason to go see him. What was he going to say? That he didn't like being used for a bet? That he would have rather have asked him another way? No, damn it, the way he did it wasn't wrong, but-

Hiei stopped on the fourth floor. Oh, shit, office hours were on Friday, and it was Monday. Was he going to even be in? If he came this far, he may as well try. Plus, wasn't he supposed to be super studious or something? Kurama probably never left his desk. He walked down the hallway, glancing into different rooms to see if this was the right floor. He hadn't seen the rest of the floors, so he was trying to remember what to look for. He was pretty sure he recognized the chemistry stuff that was in the other room, and the big tanks of… something.

God, why didn't any of these doors have labels? Some of the had a name of a professor or something, but most were bare. "This is so fucking stupid," he muttered, trying a few at random on the left side of the hallway. "This is so stupid." His heart was beating faster than it should have after a few flights of stairs and a quick walk. What the hell was even happening to him? He finally found one that turned, and hoped that it was the right one. Hiei shoved it open quickly, chest so tight he felt like it could burst at any moment. "Hey, Kurama? I-"

"Oh, Hiei" Kurama said, startled, looking up from his laptop quickly. "Hello."

He had opened the right door. There he was, at his small desk, in his plant packed room, hunched over his laptop. With Touya standing no less than three feet behind him.

Hiei froze halfway in the doorway. His knuckles had gone white where they gripped the handle, and the other was gripping the door frame with equal force.

"Hey," Touya said.

There was a sudden and very thick lump in Hiei's throat, and he wouldn't have been able to make a sound even if he wanted to. His eyes just kept darting between the two of them. Kurama's brow was furrowed, and Touya, that bastard, was starting to smile.

"Unfortunately office hours are over, Hiei," Kurama said, finally, "but if your question is brief I would be happy to help you." Were the ferns on his desk bigger than they had been last time? He wouldn't be surprised, with the amount of plants he had lying around, that he would have a green thumb. Fuck. Fuck. Why was he thinking about that now ? He probably took really good care of them. How could they get enough sunlight in a room like this? Kurama wasn't the type to talk to his plants, so maybe he did something else special for them, he would, after all-

"Hiei?"

Hiei blinked, and let go of the doorframe. "Uh…" God, Touya was snickering. He wanted to strangle him. "It's fine."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Kurama said. Oh no, he was standing up, too, no no no no-

"Yeah," Hiei said, quickly. "Bye."

He slammed the door behind him and went down the hall as fast as he could without making loud footfalls. He ran down the stairs, and across campus, and to his room, where he nearly collapsed with relief alone when he saw Kuwabara wasn't back. He climbed up on the bed and squeezed the pillow to his face, kicking his shoes off the side, and praying that he'd only started to blush when he got back to his room. "Fuck," he whispered into his pillow, squeezing it as hard as he could. "Oh, fuck ."

* * *

 **AN:** long wait, but an update!


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